[HOWTO] SDL sound (read: ALSA) support for Enemy Territory

[nullkey]

UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE HERE

about
et-sdl-sound provides SDL-based replacement for deprecated OSS-based sound systems of Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake III Arena. To put it short, et-sdl-sound is a working ALSA support hack for ET, RTCW and Q3 (and all mods for those binaries).

Since modifying binary directly makes game unplayable, this is accomplished via replacing standard sound system functions in run-time by forcing dynamic linker to load an additional dynamic library to the process (so-called LD_PRELOAD trick).

This library currently supports ET 2.60b, ET 2.60, ET 2.56, ET 2.55, RTCW SP 1.41, RTCW MP 1.41 Quake3 1.31, Quake3 1.32, Quake3 1.32b and Quake3 1.32c.

installation and usage
Make sure you have core SDL library installed

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-alsa

et-sdl-sound script contains everything you need to launch Enemy Territory with SDL audio support. The fastest way to install the script is to execute following command line:

wget -q -O - http://nullkey.ath.cx/~stuff/et-sdl-sound/et-sdl-sound.gz | gzip -d > et-sdl-sound && chmod a+x et-sdl-sound

Now you can start Enemy Territory with SDL sound support by running ./et-sdl-sound

There are also specific launcher scripts for RTCW SP (wolfsp-sdl-sound.gz), RTCW MP (wolf-sdl-sound.gz) and Quake 3 (quake3-sdl-sound.gz).

download
Please use this download link as it contains the most recent version.

PS. I posted this first to gentoo forums but then tought that ubuntu users could also find this useful...

[Xzallion]

Neither one worked for me. The static version gave a segmentation fault, and the first one said I don't have libSDL_sound or something or another.

[nullkey]

Originally Posted by Xzallion Neither one worked for me. The static version gave a segmentation fault, and the first one said I don't have libSDL_sound or something or another.

Could you please provide some information about your system? Giving output of following commands would help. And does "et-sdl-sound.so" segfault if you install libsdl-sound1.2 package?

strings /path/to/et.x86 | grep "ET 2"
uname -a
gcc -v

[nullkey]

Oops, it seems that I don't need to link it with SDL_sound. I attached the updated version which does not need SDL_sound. Download link is also updated. I hope this solves some problems

[Yeeha]

worked for me without any problems.

[jrohde]

Hi,

I must be missing something. If I run:

LD_PRELOAD=/tmp/et-sdl-sound/et-sdl-sound.so /home/jakob/enemy-territory/et.x86

I get this response:

"You are not running Enemy Territory 2.60b!"

I don't know exactly what version I'm running, but it should be the newest.

Any suggestions?

Jakob

[nullkey]

Originally Posted by jrohde "You are not running Enemy Territory 2.60b!"

Please update your et.x86. You can get the update from 3D Gamers for example. 2.60b just fixes some buffer overflows and actual protocol is not modified, so servers don't make difference between 2.60 and 2.60b (in fact there are even 2.60c and 2.60d for OS X ).

If you face some PunkBuster kicks after upgrade, you should update PunkBuster by copying pbsec.htm to /path/to/et/pb/ and lc001298.htm & la001377.htm to /path/to/et/pb/htm

[octavio]

Hi, i have don all you say but i get this error.

$> LD_PRELOAD=/home/octavio/Desktop/et-sdl-sound/et-sdl-sound.so /usr/local/games/enemy-territory/et.x86

...

----------------------
271 files in pk3 files
----- CL_Shutdown -----
-----------------------
----- CL_Shutdown -----
-----------------------
Sys_Error: Couldn't load default.cfg - I am missing essential files - verify your installation?

When i run et there is no problem, but no sound.

Do you know what it may be? And how to get this work of course?

Thanks.

[nullkey]

Originally Posted by octavio When i run et there is no problem, but no sound. Do you know what it may be? And how to get this work of course?

I should have made myself a little bit more clear about this. Every time you want to use the new SDL sound system, you should run ET with provided LD_PRELOAD... -command. To make this easier, make following script and put it somewhere safe, for example where you put et-sdl-sound.so.

#!/bin/bash

# path to enemy territory installation directory
cd /path/to/enemy-territory/

# path to et-sdl-sound(-static).so
export LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/et-sdl-sound(-static).so

./et.x86 $*

unset LD_PRELOAD

Then make the script executable and point your ET shortcut to this script.

Sys_Error: Couldn't load default.cfg - I am missing essential files - verify your installation?

That means your working directory is not the directory where you have installed Enemy Territory. That's why my script has line "cd /path/to/enemy-territory/".

[octavio]

Now it loads at first. But i still have no sound.

Sound works fine in my system. But i'm getting mad with this game.

Thank you very much.

I hope anybody find a solution someday.