Hello fellow Linux gamers!

Here you can find informations about ./play.it, a tool building packages for Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo and any derivative (Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, etc.) from your installers for Beneath a Steel Sky.
These packages can be installed easily with you favourite packages manager.

Download links and usage instructions can be found on the following page:
Beneath a Steel Sky

We hope youʼll enjoy the ease-of-use provided by this tool as much as we enjoy writing and tweaking it ;)

Here you go for more supported games!

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Salut camarades Linuxiens !

Vous trouverez ici des informations à propos de ./play.it, un outil construisant des paquets pour Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo ou nʼimporte quelle distribution dérivée de celles-ci (Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, etc.) à partir de vos installateurs pour Beneath a Steel Sky.
Ces paquets sʼinstallent facilement via votre gestionnaire de paquets habituel.

Les liens de téléchargement et les instructions dʼutilisation se trouvent sur la page suivante :
Beneath a Steel Sky

Nous espérons que vous apprécierez le confort apporté par cet outil autant que nous apprécions lʼécrire et lʼaméliorer ;)

Pour plus de jeux, rendez-vous par ici !

There's an easier way: Why not use the shell script already provided from gog? What does your script do, what the original script can't?

Even easier: In a lot of repositories there is actually a package for Beneath a Steel Sky (in Ubuntu for example and in Debian, Linux Mint). I'd install that and be done with it. No need to make things more complicated.

Otherwise: interesting and thank you for your post.

The ./play.it script does a fully non interactive system-wide installation, so your package manager will be aware of the game existence and will be able to handle it as well as it would had you installed it from your distribution repositories.
As an added extra, the game uses your sysem-provided version of ScummVM instead of the one bundled in the GOG installer.

From the feedback of the many users of ./play.it, this installation method is actually easier than the MojoSetup one used by GOG.
  That’s true, and it’s actually the method I would recommend. The first version of this ./play.it script was used to compare installation via ./play.it and installation via the repositories and see what was to be improved on the integration side of things.
But once the script had been written, it would have been a bit silly not to share it ;) And since then Beneath a Steel Sky has been part of the games supported by ./play.it.
  And thank you for sharing your questions ;)

Okay, that is a benefit. I just sort of made my peace with how those Mojo installers perverted the way a Linux system usually handles things like that. Somehow I think the people at gog really don't understand the differences between a Windows system and a Linux system.

Initially gog provided tarballs for the Linux versions. That I much preferred, because it is really easy to just extract those to /opt and be fine. I know, the package managers were still not aware of them. But that wasn't any actual drawback. Because the real benefit of having the package manager be aware of these installations would come if we had an actual repository behind it, which in turn would provide us with updates. Since we don't have that, the package manager can only really handle un-installing the games.

The only thing I don't get (but maybe I had to try the script for that): why is the ./play.it script easier? But that's a very minor thing. Just ignore it. A valid point. It's good to discuss such things. I felt a bit silly. But maybe something good came out of it.

By the way: I really dislike the editor for this forum. (Just a sidenote and small rant.) I always have to make copies in and out of it and edit with a separate editor. And even if I do that, I sometimes have to try twice to get it right. Am I the only one? ;)

A lot of ./play.it users know how to install packages, but have not been using Windows for years (or ever for some of them), so they are not really at ease with these interactive installers asking them where they want to install their game, creating icons on desktop and things like this, not visible in their package manager… And it becomes even worse when they have to track down dependencies by theirselves, or work-around audio issues and such.

With a ./play.it script you just need to run two commands: one to build the packages, and one to install them. And you pretty much know what is going on at any time in the process.
Most known issues and bugs with the games are worked around in some way, and dependencies are automatically installed (or included in the package if they are no longer part of the distribution the game is installed on).

Veteran Linux tinkerers won’t feel the need for such scripts (well, some still like it because it helps them keeping their system tidy), but this project seems to be very appreciated by non-technical users ;)
  My opinion on this is that the whole forum is half broken ;)
The posts like the first one in this thread I always write in a text editor, then copy-paste here.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Especially the tracking down of dependencies will become more and more of an issue as new updated versions of distributions come out, where older libraries may not be included anymore.

Linux distributors like Canonical also see this issue and have developed a way to address that: Snap packaging. https://snapcraft.io/
By the way: I'm not 100% happy about those snap packages either. They try to do it the Apple way, by packaging every application with all the libraries it might need. That means the application will work, that's good. I still have issues with that, because it will mean that we will needlessly have the same libraries several times on the system. For as long as it is used for a few applications on any one system, that may be alright. But imagine if one would try to install all the applications that way...

There's one question though: Are there really users who have never used a Windows system before? I didn't think there are such people. But I know what you mean: I have some difficulties getting along every time I am forced to use a Mac. I deeply dislike those Apple machines.

Those wizard setup tools are annoying but really not hard to understand. It would surprise me if someone is really bothered by that. What I do agree on however is: package management is a lot better. Installing a Windows system with applications using those stupid wizard setup interfaces is a real chore. Can I consider myself a veteran Linux guy with 15+ years under my belt? I don't know. What I do know however is: I am not happy if companies like gog say they support Linux if they don't understand the fundamentals of a Linux system. For example: software should never ever be installed to the user's home directory. This is the same with Windows, by the way. With Windows no one would ever think of installing software to the users's directory. Why do they assume it is alright with Linux? Do they think Linux is a toy operating system? This is why I prefer tarballs. They give me as a long time Linux user the freedom I need. If my only choice is a script however, I'd rather have a script which does it right. This means, yes, I agree with you. No worries. And Snap packaging would also help those non-technical users.

By the way: I wrote it in a different part of the forum: I have an old copy of the native Linux port of Sim City 3000. It still works on modern distribution, although the video sequences are all garbled and the audio doesn't work at all. But with this game I am happy that someone actually took the time to write a setup script which actually works on reasonably modern Linux systems.

So, what I mean by that: Thank you very much for your great effort. I will take a close look at your script and probably use it, too.

We will need to find some time to discuss about SimCity 3000 ;)
For games like Alpha Centauri, Unreal Tounament (1999 version) or Neverwinter Nights, ./play.it allow to "re-create" the native Linux version from the GOG-provided Windows installer + an archive of the Linux client hosted on our website. I think it would be nice if by working together we managed to do something like this with SimCity 3000.

Right now I won’t have time to work on this, but I’ll message you about this at some point if it’s OK with you.

Can't message you privatly. We have gone completely off-topic. Apologies to other people reading here.

Other than that: Sure, please message me, I'd be happy to help if I can. There's just one thing: I asked gog about Sim City 3000 for Linux and the answer was along the lines "not gonna happen". There seem to be issues regarding the legal situation. Nobody seems to know who the current owner of the rights to the Loki Software port is. You need to remember that this game was sold in 2000 and Loki Software went out of business in 2002. What I'm trying to say: I might be able to help getting the Loki Software port supported by your script (test it on my machine and so on), but I can't legally provide any game assets.
Here is the original page on the port: http://www.lokigames.com/products/sc3k/

Strange, my chat settings should allow anyone to message me…
No problem in derailing the topic by the way, as long as we prioritize people asking for help when they post here ;)
  Of course, we will first need to see if we can do for this game as I did for others: using the assets provided by the Windows version sold here with the binaries from the Linux version. From my experience most assets are the same between the Windows and Linux version, or can be easily converted from one format to the other.

This thread will no longer be updated, see this post on the general forums for more details: End of website maintenance