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
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March 22, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Mattek
Do you think XP would run smooth on the PS3?
Have you had ANY luck at all with diablo2 running on the PS3? - Could it be the OS you used?
March 24, 2009 at 7:36 am
billb
XP will definitely run slower than previous versions of Windows on the PS3 (via QEMU).
Due to the higher memory requirements of XP, I don’t think it would help for Diablo 2. With the PS3’s PPE core having to emulate a full x86 machine I think it’s just not going to be fast enough no matter how you do it.
March 26, 2009 at 5:58 am
Joe Cupertino
I got the Java plugin working for firefox but what I want to do is to be able to run Java apps from the YDL 6.1 desktop.
April 2, 2009 at 2:37 am
PiolloTorm
Hello billb:
Sorry for my poor english, but i don’t control your Lenguage.
My Nickname is Piollotorm and I’ve use your install guide to compile SDLMame that you posted in http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/bodega/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=sdl+mame#p28. It’s very good.
I’ve translate (freely) to spanish by petition of one user forum (www.elotrolado.net). I´m a simply user.
I tell you if you don’t want to make it public and you want i erase it.
A lot of thanks.
April 10, 2009 at 10:30 am
BAS
Hey bill, I am having some issues. Now I am pretty much a noob to YDL in general, but here is the issue I am having. I went to do this sudo revisited stuff, and it kept saying sudoers was a read only file and wouldn’t let me change it or anything, even in root. So I made a new file, copying all the content of the original, then named it sudoers, and erased the old one (probably a stupid move lol) but now I get this error when I try to enter sudo, it says “sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0644, should be 0440″ and it doesn’t allow me to enter sudo. Is there a way to fix this? or am I screwed? Again, I’m new to this stuff so all help you can afford would be appreciated! Thanks!
-BAS
April 12, 2009 at 12:15 pm
billb
I need to update that guide including the step to make the sudoers file writable. You can fix the issue you’re having with (I’m assuming you’ve already edited the file and made the change):
su -
chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers
exit
April 18, 2009 at 12:18 pm
morgan
Any chance you could attempt to run Grim Fandango using this method? Running that would be my only real reason for going through this process and I don’t want to bother if it won’t work. Thanks.
April 26, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Mick711
Hello
On the original Cloanto files af_boot.uaerc you have :
# E-UAE configuration file
# General options
unix.rom_path=/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/rom
unix.floppy_path=
use_gui=false
use_debugger=false
# Host CPU-specific options
x86.use_tsc=true
# CPU emulation options
cpu_type=68020/68881
cpu_speed=max
cpu_compatible=false
cpu_cycle_exact=false
# JIT compiler options
cachesize=16384
compfpu=true
# Chipset options
chipset=ecs_agnus
ntsc=false
immediate_blits=true
collision_level=none
# ROM options
kickstart_rom_file=$(FILE_PATH)/amiga-os-3×0.rom
kickstart_key_file=$(FILE_PATH)/rom.key
kickshifter=false
# RAM options
chipmem_size=4
bogomem_size=0
fastmem_size=8
z3mem_size=0
gfxcard_size=8
# Floppy drive options
floppy0=
floppy0type=0
floppy1=
floppy1type=0
floppy2=
floppy2type=0
floppy3=
floppy3type=0
nr_floppies=4
floppy_speed=100
# Hard disk options
filesystem2=rw,DH0:System:/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/dir/System,1
filesystem2=rw,DH1:Work:/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/dir/Work,0
# Display options
gfx_framerate=1
gfx_width_windowed=800
gfx_height_windowed=600
gfx_width_fullscreen=800
gfx_height_fullscreen=600
gfx_fullscreen_amiga=true
gfx_lores=false
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_correct_aspect=false
gfx_center_horizontal=none
gfx_center_vertical=none
show_leds=false
# Sound options
sound_output=normal
sound_bits=16
sound_frequency=44100
sound_channels=stereo
sound_interpol=none
# Input device options
joyport0=mouse
joyport1=kbd1
# SCSI emulation options
scsi=true
scsi_device=/dev/cdrom
# Network emulation
bsdsocket_emu=true
# X11-specific options
x11.map_raw_keys=false
x11.low_bandwidth=false
x11.use_mitshm=true
What difference is necessary for run on Linux on PS3 ?
April 30, 2009 at 5:53 am
billb
@morgan — I’ll give that a try. Also it appears there’s a sub-project of scummvm that is in the works (http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/residual/index.php?title=Main_Page) but I haven’t tried it.
April 30, 2009 at 5:56 am
billb
@Mick711 — my .uaerc file is shown in this post: http://blogs.ydl.net/billb/2008/03/02/amiga-os-3x-on-the-ps3/
May 18, 2009 at 4:27 pm
justfreakinwayne
Hey Billb , I’ve been using ydl for about a year. Still no good at running outside gui. Since 6.1 I can’t find any p2p programs that work. Will never get Usenext on this thing due to the mono issue., but do you know of anything?
May 25, 2009 at 6:36 am
billb
I use deluge:
http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/ps3linux/ps3bodega61/ppc/repodata/repoview/deluge-0-0.5.8.6-2.ydl6.bdg.html
After setting up repo:
http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/bodega/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21
Then just:
yum install deluge
The version I have in the repo is a bit old, but it works for me.
May 26, 2009 at 9:22 am
Arakageeta
billb, do you know if anyone tried compiling snes9x with IBM’s Cell xlc compiler (aka Octopiler)? I am curious to see if the emulator can be enhanced with xlc’s automated SPE offloading.
I was thinking of taking a shot at this myself, but I wanted to check here first.
May 27, 2009 at 9:32 am
billb
Sorry, I don’t know of anyone who has attempted that.