Zugg Software :: View topic - Good News - CMUD and Linux

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

I know a few people have tried before with mixed results, but I wonder if things are working better now that the theming engine has been disabled.

CMUD 2.16 on Ubuntu 7.10 with Crossover 6.2.0 - It works out of the box, no tweaking required.
I expect this means it'll work on MacOS X too but I don't have one to test.

So if ever you needed a reason to upgrade from zMUD, here it is...

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

It's worth mentioning that I know nothing about Linux. I have it dual booting on my laptop but it really is a case of 'If I can do it, anyone can'.
So don't be put off trying to get this to work, it was a walk in the park.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

Very very nice!
I've long been meaning to try it under Cedega ;)

Apprentice Joined: 29 Jun 2001 Posts: 198 Location: USA

Awesome! I notice in your screenshot that CMud is shown as unregistered. Is that because you didn't register it or was there a problem with getting it to register under Linux?

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

It was just because I hadn't registered it yet.
I've just tried now and after you type in the code and hit okay then the window hangs - then then when you restart it it's registered, so it does work fine.

Also, since the laptop dual boots Vista I thought I'd check out Ctrl-Q times
in Ubuntu - 10.2
in Vista - 6.1

this on a Thinkpad T43 - 1.86Ghz Pentium M, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD and Radeon X300 GPU

So while it does seem to run slower it's not unusable by any measure.

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:45 pm

Cool, great news. Yet another good reason to have removed the theme stuff.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

I've got a Mac OSX box sitting in the back room I could fire up and check. I've never played with crossover though.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

Bah, I'm running an old iMac with OSX and Crossover requires an Intel Mac.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

Well, since we're all playing with compatibility in this thread...

Using a dual core... and VMWare/Bachs being assigned to 2nd core everything else to first core...

I've successfully run CMUD under both emulators having Win XP Pro SP2 installed on both (used same image actually).
However, the slowdown is horrendous even with it having one CPU core all to itself.. Most likely due to the rather limited RAM on this laptop ;)

Still, yet another way to run it around under other OS :)

Cheers.

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:43 pm

Hmm, hopefully this will still be true in v2.17. I discovered that v2.16 was not loading the XP Manifest file that uses the proper WinXP ComCtl32 DLL file. That is why buttons don't look right in v2.16 (I'm surprised nobody reported this). v2.17 properly loads the XP Manifest file, which tells Windows to use the latest COMCTL32.DLL file, which is what enables proper Windows XP theme support.

Anyway, test this again when 2.17 is released. If it doesn't work, then at least you'll know what the problem is (emulator not providing the latest COMCTL32.DLL file).

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Um, wrong thread Zugg?

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:24 pm

No, this is the correct thread. What I am saying is that v2.16 didn't include the XP Manifest file, and this might have made it easier to get it working under Linux. But v2.17 will have this manifest file added back in, and this might cause problems again on Linux Windows emulators that do not properly handle the multiple versions of the COMCTRL32.DLL file.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Still works fine in 2.17 btw Mr. Green

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:52 pm

Woohoo! Thanks for the report!

Novice Joined: 22 Feb 2002 Posts: 48 Location: Latvia

Hi,

I don't have as great news :)
I was trying to launch cmud 2.16 and 2.17 under CrossOver 6.2.0 and both times
I ran in the same problem as soon as Line on the Initial screen changes from 'Loading' to
'Initializing Sessions' one error report shows up that i'm unable to send to zuggsoft :(
Tho if I say Continue app I'm able to create new session that connect to my mud and
I'm able to play it, didnt tried loading all of my settings.
And the main problem ....initial screen stays in the middle of desktop and im unable to
move it away, if I try to kill it cmud goes down with it.
Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 170

I'd never used CTRL-Q until I saw it mentioned above and got curious, what is considered a good speed? On my laptop I get a 3.2 most of the time. (Windows Vista, 2 GB RAM @ 667 mhz, Intel Core Duo 2 T7200 @ 1.96 GHz (Factory underclocked with a locked BIOS...pisses me off...))

Wanderer Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 59

Not at home so can't try this out right now, but does the mapper work in this version for linux, or does it encounter the same problem as ZMud?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:31 pm

I've recently started using Ubuntu 8.10 on a laptop I just bought. I am a linux newb, but tried it out when I was having problems installing XP to the thing. I since got XP to work as well, but have been unimpressed with it in comparison to Ubuntu. I've had all sorts of grief getting the right drivers for an Acer laptop for XP.. while Ubuntu worked great right out of the box. (Surprising turnaround.. hehe.)

The only thing missing is CMUD, but I am having no luck with getting it to work in crossover. (Crossover 7.1, Ubuntu 8.10)

I set the windows version of the bottle to XP, and installed CMUD 2.37 (I have not tried 3 yet, didn't want to push my luck, heh).
I got an access violation during install, though the install continued and seemingly completed. When I try to run CMUD I get the access violation as well, and CMUD does not start up.

Anyone have any hints?

Wanderer Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 59

I haven't used CMud in a while, ever since I removed my windows partition, so getting that the email sure got me excited. But it was for naught since getting Z/CMud to work in Linux at that level (admittedly you need to use a few hacks), using Wine was never the problem, Its getting the db related functions like the mapper to work thats really the problem, and which is still a problem. So to be exact, the title of the thread should be changed to "It Works (partially) in 2.17".

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:32 am

Mmm, the reason the DB stuff didn't work was because the old mapper used MDAC/ADO. The new mapper (3.0+) uses sqlite, and might work a little better.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

The cMUD beta 3.03a runs on Wine 1.1.12 with Fedora 10 though the application feels pretty slow and there are some artefacts. The new mapper works.

What does not work:
1. Icons in selection screen are not drawn properly.
2. Weird mysterious 2nd tiny window appears on desktop.
3. Redrawing of output text is not done properly.
4. Windows /menus flicker a lot while opening.
5. While mapping areas movement in the MUD is slowed down. Follow mode in map runs fast though.
6. Command line is not very fast at accepting input.
7. Docking does not work if you have set that the window manager is allowed to decorate the windows in winecfg. If you haven't then docking does work.
8. Pinging using cMUD cause exception to be thrown.
9. cMUD frequenly comes into the foreground when it is in the background.

Also tested it on zMUD 7.21:
Most things work. However there are big problems with the command line - it doesn't show what you write. The mapper does not work using default Wine installation. To get the mapper to work you need to use Winetricks to download and install MDAC and JET. Overall the experience feels better in zMUD but unfortunately the invisible text in the command line ruins it.

Summary of issues:
1. Command line doesn't show the text you write. Solution: Install richedit using Winetricks will make the text show.
2. Mapper doesn't work. Solution: MDAC & JET must be installed using Winetricks.
3. Suddenly I got, "Your system clock appears to have been changed" copy protection warning, and could no longer start zMUD using Wine.
4. Output window has redrawing issues like in cMUD.

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:28 pm

1) CMUD uses some newer features in the "ListView" component that is built into windows. It uses the new "Tile" mode introduced in WinXP (maybe SP2). It's possible Wine doesn't fully support this feature in the ListView component. A screen show of what isn't "drawn properly" might help.

2) It's probably showing a window for the second copy protection process that runs at the same time as CMUD. Just my guess.

3) Again, not sure what you mean by "properly".

4) Not surprising since they probably are not buffering the screen I/O exactly like Windows does. That's where a real copy of WinXP running in VMware on Linux would work much better. Wine just cannot perfectly "emulate" Windows (even though it's not an emulator) in all of it's behavior.

5) It's probably the update speed of drawing the map over and over. 3.03 doesn't yet optimize this so the mapper might be redrawing the map more than necessary. It's possible that any database updates cause the screen to repaint, which would make it slower when adding new rooms.

6) Surprising, since the command line is a 3rd party Delphi rich-text control that doesn't use an Windows DLL components (CMUD doesn't use the Windows RichText control anymore). Maybe it's another case of repainting the text or maybe it's the background thread doing the spellchecking as-you-type. You might try turning off the spellchecking to see if it makes any difference. The same component is used to view the help topics in the Help window, so you might check to see if that is slow too.

7) Yes, anything that interferes with the normal window management is likely to mess up docking. Docking is done at a very low level and is very Windows specific.

8) Pinging calls the Windows ICMP.DLL file, so sounds like that DLL is missing or not properly implemented. Do you get the "Send bug report" dialog when it crashes?

9) Have no idea on that one. Would need more information on what is happening when it comes into the foreground. Is is getting input from the MUD? Running a script? or what?

Your zMUD issues is all correct. The command line in zMUD uses the Windows RichEdit control, and zMUD uses MDAC and JET extensively. Good to hear that CMUD doesn't need any of those "fixes". That was part of the intent in all of this rewrite to get rid of MDAC.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

3) It is difficult to explain it. It looks like lines get stuck in the upper region of the output window. For example the first line never seems to update once it has had some text set to it. However if you left click on the output window then it is updated and looks correctly. So it is like it fails to draw new stuff above the previously drawn region in the upper part of the window. Could it be some clipping issue?

4) The problem with windows flashing might be related to lack of "LockWindowUpdate" function which Wine complains about as soon as you open a new window. So that is something Wine still doesn't support.

8) Turned out Wine doesn't allow ping to be done when you run as a non root user. The send bug report window reports "Error initializing ICMP Handle".

9) It does not appear to be related to output. I tried send some text to it but then it didn't popup.

Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 12:16 am

3) Well, CMUD (and zMUD) definitely do some non-standard stuff to speed up text scrolling. When the screen is locked from output updates, the OnPaint message from Windows is intercepted and the clip/update box is added to a list. When the screen is told to refresh, it uses this list to update all of the various regions. This is controlled by the Scroll Amount (or Refresh Amount..forget what it's called now). Normally this is set to 5 lines, so CMUD doesn't scroll the screen until 5 lines are received. And during trigger execution, screen updates are blocked in case the text is going to get deleted by a #GAG trigger. But normally when the screen is updated, CMUD calls the ScrollWindowEx API routine to scroll the window, and then it invalidates the rectangle at the bottom where the new lines are displayed. So maybe a problem with how they handle ScrollWindowEx with clipping regions?

4) CMUD definitely uses LockWindowUpdate in many places to prevent flickering, as does many of the DevExpress components used in CMUD. So that explains that one. Wonder why they don't support it...it's been part of Windows for a long long time.

8) Wow, that's surprising, but good to know.

Novice Joined: 05 Jan 2003 Posts: 39 Location: Netherlands

Howdy!

I've been muddling about with getting the latest releases working and found I /am/ able to run cMUD 2.37 public after some tricks, 3.03 beta fails consistently.

For those interested in trying cMUD 2.37 public, here's what I did:

1) Get a clean wine folder
2) Look on wineHQ at IE6 SP1 for installation steps (register dlls, move em, install, reregister the files)
3) Install cMUD 2.37 (this will give an error but continue to install)
4) start IE6 (wine IEXPLORE)
5) In IE6, go to security settings and set the slider for public webpages to "LOW", apply and exit IE
6) start cMUD

if it fails, repeat steps 4 through 6.

I've tried installing the required extra packages to get the mapper working but to no avail, the window management fails to work that out properly and makes it impossible for me to get back to my mud window.

cMUD 3.03 does not work, regardlessly of anything I've tried.

In crossover office both cMUD's fail with an access violation.

[edit]: Forgot to say, found some interesting info here: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12948
It explains why the problem shows up and also attempts to locate the issue. It basically concludes that the tracing functionality in the linux kernel is the problem.