PS3 Bodega

I’ve been testing the limits of what Windows games can run via QEMU’s x86 emulation on the PS3. At first I tried Windows 98 but it turns out that Windows 95 seems to make things run a little snappier. And most of the Windows games that will work should run on 95 anyway…

I have installed Diablo + the Hellfire expansion with 1.01 update and that’s running very well. There’s a bit of stuttering in the cutscene videos, but gameplay is perfectly smooth and of course the atmospheric music is great.

Instead of worrying with the CD every time I want to play, I made an .iso file of it and play from that instead. To create an .iso file of a CD on Linux, you use this command:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/cdrom_image.iso

Where /dev/cdrom is the device name of your CD ROM drive. It appears the CD need not be mounted for this procedure. For example, to make an .iso of my Diablo CD, I said:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/media/apricorn/diskimages/diablo.iso
(/media/apricorn/ is the path where I have a USB hard drive mounted)

Assuming you’re able to get Windows 95 up and running on QEMU, the process for installing Diablo is simple — just install like you normally would on Windows. DirectX is included on the install disk, too, so you can install that at the same time.

Installing the Hellfire expansion is equally straightforward. You do need to change CD’s though, and this is where using .iso files makes things much easier.

While QEMU is running Windows 95, you hit Ctrl-Alt-2 to bring up the QEMU monitor. At the (qemu) prompt, type:

eject cdrom

change cdrom /path/to/your.iso

For example, to eject the diablo.iso (”cdrom”) and insert the hellfire.iso (”cdrom”) while QEMU is still running Windows 95, I use:

Ctrl-Alt-2 (that’s the number 2 key, NOT the F2 key)

eject cdrom

change cdrom /media/apricorn/diskimages/hellfire.iso

Ctrl-Alt-1 (to change back to the normal QEMU window where Windows 95 is running).

The ability to change .iso files / cdroms while QEMU is running is critical when installing games that require more than one CD.

Other games I have tried on QEMU (some of these screenshots are from Fedora 7 PPC on PS3 instead of YDL, but they run the same on YDL, and some were done on YDL 5.x):

Starcraft — A little stuttering in cutscene videos, but otherwise appears to run OK. I didn’t play beyond the first level.

Thief — Menus, music, and in-game sound are all OK, but WAY TO SLOW to be playable (1 frame per second or less). I didn’t have any hope for this one working anyway, but you never know …

Robert E. Lee: Civil War General — This no longer runs on Windows XP, but runs fine on QEMU on PS3.

Duke Nukem 3D — A bit slow, but playable. A much better alternative is running the Duke Nukem 3D source port for Linux (an RPM for it is on my downloads page — full version game data is required). I had to compile QEMU with Adlib soundcard support for sound to work properly, but maybe I just needed to install a Sound Blaster driver for DOS instead.

Rise of the Triad — Also a little slow but playable. There’s a source port for this one on www.icculus.org but it requires some work to get it running properly. I haven’t made an RPM for this one yet, but I intend to make one.

PokerStars client — Running on Windows 98 on QEMU. Slow to start up but was playable. I only tried this once at the request of someone else, so I don’t know if the latest version of the client still works on QEMU on PS3.

Blasteroids (DOS) — Runs fine if I recall correctly.

Diablo II — Almost! But too slow to be considered playable. I didn’t have any in-game sound, either.

Reference links:

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-ISO-File-in-Linux

How to: Install Windows 98 on your PS3 (Yellow Dog Community Board)

http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/user-doc.html

I recently discovered a recreation of Bioware’s Infinity Engine which runs Baldur’s Gate 2, IceWind Dale 1 and 2, and Planescape Torment. The project, named GemRB (”Game engine made (with) (pre)Rendered Background”), is still in alpha and the games aren’t fully playable, but it looks promising!

With a little work and some help from the GemRB discussion forum I was able to get it running on the PS3 under Yellow Dog Linux 6. Here are some screenshots of Icewind Dale running on my system using gemRB:

There were no performance issues on the PS3 — the game appears to run at full speed. The sound effects are perfect, but I have not yet been able to get the music to play. There isn’t much to do in the games at this time since a number of features haven’t been implement yet, but it’s great to see an engine for these games running on the PS3.

For more information, check out the GemRB wiki and the Sourceforge project homepage. The GemRB discussion forum can be found here.

If you want to try it yourself, be sure to grab the latest source from SVN. Here’s a basic howto:

1. Open a terminal window and create a folder where you’d like to download the source. For example, I use a build folder in my home directory:

mkdir build

2. Change to your new folder and download the source with this command:

cd build

svn co https://gemrb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gemrb/gemrb/trunk gemrb

3. Change to the gemrb source folder and run autogen.sh to prepare for compilation:

cd gemrb

./autogen.sh

You may need to install additional libraries on your system — the configure script should point these out.

4. Run make and make install. This will compile gemRB and install it in a GemRB folder in your home directory. You can run both commands on one line like so:

make && make install

5. Change to your new ~/GemRB folder and edit GemRB.cfg.sample. To set it up for Icewind Dale, I made the following changes and saved it as GemRB.cfg in the ~/GemRB folder:

GameType=iwdGameName=Icewind Dale   

GamePath=/media/apricorn/gatedata/icewind/   

CD1=/media/apricorn/diskimages/icewind1/   

CD2=/media/apricorn/diskimages/icewind2/cd2/   

PluginsPath=./plugins/   

EndianSwitch=1

The GamePath is a folder where I copied a complete install of Icewind Dale from a Windows PC (you can install Icewind Dale on Windows via QEMU if necessary), and the CD1 and CD2 folders are where I copied all the files from the two install CDs. The EndianSwitch=1 is necessary for game to run properly on the PS3.

6. Finally, run gemrb. I had to “hide” the music folder from gemrb because it crashed when attempting to play the music at the title screen. Also on my system I don’t have a /dev/dsp — it is /dev/dsp1 instead, so I made a symbolic link to /dev/dsp1.

Renaming the music folder:

mv /media/apricorn/gatedata/icewind/music /media/apricorn/gatedata/icewind/music.bak

Making a link to /dev/dsp1:

sudo ln -s /dev/dsp1 /dev/dsp

Starting gemrb:

cd ~/GemRB

./gemrb

 

That’s right!  An upcoming patch for Lair, a poorly rated PS3 game due to it’s forced sixaxis control scheme, will allow players to use anal…og controls instead.  :)  I can’t imagine why they didn’t do this in the first place.  Maybe I’ll consider buying this one now.  According to the news over at IGN, this may show up around April 17th.  Coincidentally, I believe the new Playstation Store interface is also supposed to be available on the 17th.

“They’re adding WHAT?!?” 

How did this one slip past me?  I was browsing through the gaming magazines in the bookstore today and saw a Highlander game mentioned in GamePro.  See screenshots on the www.gamepro.com site, and here’s a producer interview over on ps3.ign.com.  The official site for the game can be found on Eidosinteractive.com (Flash player required).

Being a big fan of the first movie and the TV series I’m looking forward to this one!

I’m not saying I’m happy to get my latest power bill, but it certainly looks a lot better than the past couple of months! It’s about half of what it usually is because I’ve made a serious effort to cut it down. My house has two 2½ ton heat pumps, plus a “mini-split” wall unit that heats/cools the media room. I have set the thermostats to let it get as cold as 62 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and 68 during the day, and just leave the wall unit turned off. It gets colder than I like it, but I’m liking this much lower power bill much better!

I also unplugged the upright freezer since we hardly use it these days, and unplugged the mini-fridge in the master bedroom. Nearly all the light bulbs are compact fluorescent except for the recessed lights. I suppose I could turn off some of these computers (normally two are running plus a laptop and the PS3), but I don’t think they play that big of a part. I think the next thing will be to install a timer on the water heater. Maybe if I put up a clothesline instead of using the electric dryer we could get it down below 1500 kWh for a month… ?

MMmmm… reasonable power bill. That would be nice.

EDIT: Funny — saw the black Google page today for the Earth Hour thing. Looks like I’m already doing my part.