Hexen 2 on YDL 6

4/6/08:  Updated ppc rpm file(s) are now hosted at the Hammer of Thyrion SourceForge site.

Here’s a youtube video showing Hexen 2 running on Yellow Dog 6 for PS3. This is made possible by the awesome Hammer of Thyrion project on Sourceforge. Like Quake 2, it has a software rendering mode that the Playstation 3 handles very well.

While there are no PPC RPM packages listed, there’s a source package file on the project’s download page which makes installing this one much easier than building from the source alone. I downloaded the hexen2-1.4.2-1.src.rpm file, then copied it to my /usr/src/yellowdog/SRPMS folder. Then from the command line, I said:

cd /usr/src/yellowdog/SRPMS
sudo setarch ppc rpmbuild --rebuild --ppc hexen2-1.4.2-1.src.rpm

I was pleasantly surprised to see it go through the entire process without a hitch! If you’ve played with many open source projects you’ll know this isn’t always the case. Moving to my /usr/src/yellowdog/RPMS folder I found the hexen2-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm, hexen2-debuginfo-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm, and hexenworld-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm it had generated. So I just browsed to it with the file manager and double-clicked on the hexen2-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm file to start the install. Again, no problems at all. If you run into trouble here, see my list of Third party repos for Yellow Dog 6. Rebuilding the package will require SDL-devel, at least.

After installing from the new hexen2-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm I saw I had a Hexen 2 menu item under Applications -> Games. Of course now I needed the data files for Hexen 2. If you want to use the demo files you need version 1.11 of the Hexen 2 demo. Just search Google for hexen 2 demo 1.11 and you should find it available from several sources.

The Hexen 2 demo comes in the form of an .EXE file, but that’s OK — you can still use the unzip command to extract the file. For example, assuming you have downloaded the file to your Desktop, open a terminal window and:

unzip -j ~/Desktop/h2demo.exe Install/Hexen2/data1/*.pak

That will extract the pak0.pak file to your current directory (the -j switch tells unzip you just want to extract the file not create directories). Then you need to move the pak0.pak file to the necessary location: /usr/games/hexen2/data1

sudo mv pak0.pak /usr/games/hexen2/data1

After that, you should be ready to run Hexen 2. If you want to use the full version of Hexen 2, see the readme on the Hammer of Thyrion project page for details.

Start Hexen 2 from the menu item Applications -> Games -> Hexen 2. This should bring up a Hexen II Launcher window. Uncheck the box next to OpenGL, optionally leave Full Screen checked, and select SDL for sound, sample rate 48000 (optional). Without OpenGL checked it will allow you to select a max resolution of 640×480 — don’t worry, you can change it later in the game menu. Finally, click on Play Hexen II. If everything went well you should be up and running!

On my system I’m running at 1280×720, but the game starts at 640×480 at first. If I bring up the game menu I can select Options -> Video Modes and change it to 1280×720 (you can see me doing that in the video).

Maybe they’ll host PPC rpm files on the Hammer of Thyrion page so you won’t have to go through the process of rebuilding the source package… If not, I created a Yellow Dog Linux group on Yahoo! Groups that has some limited file storage. You have to register (free) with Yahoo Groups to access it. In the files area you’ll find a ready-made hexen2-1.4.2-1.ppc.rpm file, along with one I created for Quake 2: quake2-r0.16.1-ydl6.ppc.rpm.

Hopefully all of this is OK with everyone involved …