Installing Aliens VS Predator Gold
CONVENTIONS USED

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!


© D. Olson 2001-2003 -- Originally found on The Mandrake eXPerience