I decided that I wanted a challenge, so I went and got Aliens VS Predator Gold, thinking that
it would be hard to get going. Turns out it's almost as easy as installing Quake 3 Arena.
So I packed it up, with permission from relnev, and here's a quick tutorial and RPM, which
should be all you need to get going with this game.
First of all, this tutorial works only with AVP Gold. If you have the original version, I recommend
you look over at Icculus.org and see about getting the CVS source yourself and following any
instructions about getting it to work. Also, this is not meant for the demo. If you wish to run
the demo, I recommend you do the same as above.
Secondly, it requires that you install it under Windows first, using pure Windows or VMware (Wine
doesn't work), because the data is encrypted or something. I tried just copying the files from the
CD, but it doesn't work properly. I highly recommend that you make a copy of the data onto a CD-R
once you have installed it in Windows so that you don't have to do it again. I recommend this for
Return to Castle Wolfenstein also. You can do this at a friend's house, asuming you have any friends
who use Windows and have a CD-RW drive.
AVP requires both SDL and OpenAL for it to work. Most systems have SDL installed, but if not, try
using the command
su -c "urpmi libSDL" in a console. This will prompt you for the root password
and then it should install SDL.
To install OpenAL, open a console and type in
su and hit
Enter. Now enter the root
password and hit
Enter. Next, type in
urpmi libopenal0 and hit
Enter. This will
prompt you for CD 3, assuming you are using the Download Edition of Mandrake 8.2, and will install
the OpenAL libraries. An alternate method would be to install the CVS version of OpenAL, which is
recommended, but not covered in the scope of this tutorial. Once it is done, close this console.
Next, you can install the RPM. First, download it here:
avp-gold-cvs220802-3.i586.rpm.
Now, open a console in the directory where you downloaded that file to by opening Konqueror to that
directory and then pressing
CTRL+T. Type in
su and hit
Enter. Now type in
rpm -ivh avp-gold-cvs220802-3.i586.rpm and hit
Enter. This will install the AVP binary,
a script that runs it, a symlink to the script, two icons, and a couple scripts that are used to set
permissions properly on the AVP data files (it should automatically change the case of the files too).
Note that the symlinked script just changes to the proper directory before running the avp binary because
it requires that it be run from the same directory as the data files. This is just a convenience for you,
so you don't need to worry about what directory you are in when you run the game. I will explain the other
two scripts later on.
Next, you need to copy the data files from the Windows install of AVP to the proper directory in Linux.
I will assume that the path to the data is
/mnt/win_c/Games/AvP/, so you will have to adjust the
commands by replacing it with the proper location. If you don't know how, contact me or ask any Linux-using
friends you may have on how to access your data on your Windows partitions. Of course, as noted earlier,
the best way to do this is to copy the data to a CD-R so you never need to use Windows more than once.
Note: The directory that AVP will be installed to is
/usr/local/games/avp/. I chose this based on the fact
that all other Linux games that I have bought get installed here by default as well, and hey, it's as good a
place as any.
To begin copying the data, type in
cd /mnt/win_c/Games/AvP/ and hit
Enter. Remember that this is
the assumed directory to the Windows install.
Next, type in
ls followed by
Enter. You should see all the files listed in here. The ones that
you are interested in are these:
fastfiles/
avp_hud/
avp_rifs/
cd tracks.txt
language.txt.
Take note of the case of the file names, since Linux is case-sensitive. I will assume that they are all lower-case,
for purposes of this tutorial. You should rename the directories using the
mv command if they are not
all lower-case. The other two files don't matter as much, since the script we will run later will take care of them.
So, type in this command line, assuming that all the files and folders are lower-case only:
cp -a fastfiles/ avp_* language.txt cd\ tracks.txt /usr/local/games/avp/
and press
Enter Note that there is a \ before the space in the filename of the file called
cd tracks.txt.
This is a requirement! If you are in doubt, you can type in the first few characters and hit
Tab. This will
automatically complete the filenames. Just experiment with it if you haven't already.
Once the data is copied over, type in
cd /usr/local/games/avp/ and hit
Enter.
Type in
ls and hit
Enter, and you should see the following list of files in here:
avp
avp_huds/
avp.xpm
fastfile/
runavp.sh
avp2.xpm
avp_rifs/
cd tracks.txt
language.txt
tools/
Now type in
cd tools/ and hit
Enter.
This is where the two scripts mentioned earlier reside. One is a case-changing Perl script, so you need to have
Perl installed for it to work. The other one calls this script and sets the permissions on all of the game data,
because often the permissions on files copied from Winows permissions is set wrongly, and often files are set
to executable, when they shouldn't be.
If you don't have Perl installed, and you don't want to install it, you will need to ensure that every single
file in the AVP directory, including all files in subdirectories in there, are all lower-case. The rest of the
script will still run, which only sets the permissions properly.
So, you need to run this script now. Type in
./fixperms.sh and hit
Enter. You should see any
files being renamed listed on the screen. Once this is done, you are ready to play AVP! Exit that console
so that you are no longer the root user and don't do anything stupid accidentally.
Should you desire to create an icon on your desktop to AVP, you can find two icons inside the
/usr/local/games/avp/
directory. I prefer the
avp.xpm icon over the
avp2.xpm icon, but that's just my preference.
To play AVP, just open a console or a Run dialog (
ALT+F2 in KDE) and type in
avp and hit
Enter.
Enjoy the game!