BSG Freespace 2 Mod: How I got it working . . .

[Linuturk]

I had quite a bit of trouble getting Beyond the Red Line working on my Edgy system.

My specs are in my signature.

First, you'll have to grab the torrent of the release.
http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/

Go to the download section and download the torrent. I'm currently seeding.

YOU DO NOT NEED THE FULL VERSION OF FREESPACE 2 FOR THIS TO WORK. IT IS STAND-ALONE.

After the download finishes, copy the *.run file to a working directory in your home folder. I used a folder called bin in my home folder. This file has to be executable. You can use nautilus or the command line to set it as executable. Before you execute this file, install the libgtk1.2 package.

Then, execute the file by prefixing " ./ " in front of the filename in the terminal. A gui installer pops up, and should be fairly easy to follow.

After the install finishes, things got really tricky for me. You can execute the demo using the same method you installed the game with. Simply prefix the btrl_demo file with " ./ " to run the game.

I ran into a problem because of my intergrated intel chipset. When I attempted to start the first level, I'd crash to desktop, and this output would be in my terminal.

$ ./btrl_demo
libGL warning: 3D driver claims to not support visual 0x4b
ERROR: "Could not load ABexp04 anim file" at fireball/fireballs.cpp:697

If you run into this, you are lacking something called S3TC with the MESA drivers for your system.

Details are here: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheideg...3tc_index.html

Here is my process for fixing this on my machine.

First, I downloaded this file

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheideg...n060508.tar.gz

to a temporary working directory in my Home folder. Next, I made sure I had my linux-headers and build-essential installed. Next, I had to install the devel files for the Mesa driver. This was libgl1-mesa-dev. This package has dependencies.

I also installed driconf to enable the S3TC module, before installing it. I don't think the order matters, but this is important. This will install a gui config tool that you can use to change this setting, along with other settings.

Next, I went into the working directory via terminal, and ran

sudo make && sudo make install

That added that support I was missing for my system. Now, I can run the games first level!

Now I have to figure out why my mouse isn't working.