The Starport - A Freelancer Game Fansite :: Howto: Run the Freelancer game (SP, MP) and also the SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine [Forum

Howto: Run the Freelancer game (SP, MP) and also the SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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So I did another test (which I wanted to do for some time now) and finally got the Freelancer server including FLHook to work over network. I could connect from my Windows system to the Ubuntu system running in a vm. So far everything works (fingers crossed).

Using:
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS fully updated
- Wine-Devel 1.9.14 installed via https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu (but that is up to you)
- Latest winetricks installed like described here: https://wiki.winehq.org/Winetricks#Getting_winetricks (should be release 20160709 I guess)

- run sh winetricks and install everything Wine asks (Mono and Gecko).
- Install only mfc42.dll and directplay

For the server:
- run wine FLServer.exe
For the game:
- run wine Freelancer.exe

According to the posts below this also works with Debian Jessie.
If you have FLHook build with newer VS versions (e.g. 2015) you need to install the runtime.

I will update this post from time to time when new results get posted in this topic.

P.S.: You need to right click on the image and select "View Image" or similar to see it completely.

Attach file:

fllinux.jpg (176.61 KB)
289_579107f3595dd.jpg 1213X824 px

Posted on: 2016/7/21 18:36

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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You guy rocks !

I will test it on Debian.

Does it means that MP works on the game too ? Because directplay seems to run fine.

Posted on: 2016/7/21 19:02

Homlt Adventuary Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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Unfortunately I could not start Freelancer in the vm. But I had it running some time ago on a real installation. Only MP did not work. But since the server works now, MP should work, too

Posted on: 2016/7/21 19:14

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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I tested running FLserver on Debian Jessie 8.5

Following this for winehq on Debian https://wiki.winehq.org/Debian

I did exactly what you said and no more. FreeLancer installed.

Given a try to execute flserver.exe. First time it failed because it was stuck on "LOADING". So I installed the 1.1 patch. Execute the server again and it worked !

After that I wanted to give a try with my mod wich using FLhook 2.0.0. Worked too.

I given a try on the game side to connect on my modded server hosted for the moment on Win 2008 R2. I noticed that when I go on the MP menu, it's come to be VERY laggy, but I can see some servers provided by the list. When i seen mine, try a connection on it, the character menu, hopefully was saved from laggy things, I can create a character, go on space and it works like a charm.

Many thanks to you, I seek for years on this

Edit : it could be pretty good if the server can work on a raspberry, it could permit to run a low cost and greener server with zero noise at home

Posted on: 2016/7/21 22:48

Homlt Adventuary Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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You're welcome!

I was trying every now and then to get it to work. This time I wanted to check whether the native overridden dlls are correctly entered and so I first searched in the winetricks github repository. Interestingly there are two issues regarding this closed about a year ago. So I didn't need to manually check for it and just tried winetricks - with success

. Although I can't tell whether Wine development caused it or the missing entries (which is not really important

).

For me this also is a major breakthrough. I hope more people see it like this.

If you want to run it on the Pi you would also need Qemu, since Wine needs x86 capable hardware. This is propably too slow, but I have found pages describing how to run Wine in Qemu so you could test it.

Posted on: 2016/7/21 23:19

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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I remember last time i tried - MP works only at local machine.
No connection from others at the same network.
No connection from outside. So quiestion is still open.

Better to try OSS FLServer just for PvP but take a note - no missions and npcs.

Posted on: 2016/7/23 12:37

Open Sirius Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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Why would it not work if I can connect from outside of the vm? Besides Lady}{Diamond already wrote that he/she also could connect to the real server hosted on Win 2008. From a networking standpoint there is no difference if that is working. It is all UDP traffic.

Posted on: 2016/7/23 14:49

Fenris_Wolf

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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Just tested (also on debian jessie), using playonlinux to install wine 1.9.14-staging with directplay and mfc42.
flserver started fine except for my flhook 2.0 (compiled with vc2015, so may need some extra overrides)
however the server doesnt show in lan when i try connecting from a win client.
Running the client on linux the server list always shows empty, no matter if i run the server on windows (on lan), manually enter a remote servers IP in the shortcut, or run both client and server on the same machine.

It defiantly must be a change between the staging and devel versions of 1.9.14

Update: apparently not, stupid mistake not including a backslash before the : in the server:port specification, however other servers still arent shown (even skipping POL and using 1.9.14-devel with wintricks), its also reverted to being stuck on the 'loading' bar on a fully patched server.
Manually installing the vc2015 redist i was able to get hook to load though (its not in winetricks yet, and no need to override with native dll)

Posted on: 2016/7/23 16:37

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perl -e 'print join("",(a .. z," " )[9,20,18,19,26,0,13,14,19,7,4,17,26,15,4,17,11,26,7,0,2,10,4,17])'

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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@Schmackbolzen i dont know, because it was long time ago and i have noticed by netstat that server running local sockets instead of regular tcp/ip network.

So anyway big thanks for the post.
I will try LD way because i have Debian 8 too

Posted on: 2016/7/23 21:04

Open Sirius Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

#10

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You're welcome!

I first checked netstat and was actually amazed to see UDP 2302 from flserver.exe there

At first I could not believe it.

Posted on: 2016/7/23 21:32

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

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To be sure that i start from the beginning I've made a clean wine configuration by rm -rf .wine in /home/<user>/ and I uninstalled my current wine and followed the instructions for Debian.

IMPORTANT NOTE HERE:

If you use some mods be careful about the files and folders names, Linux filesystem is case sensitive, so you can have two goods.ini and Goods.ini in a folder or have two fx and FX folders, be sure that the filenames are exactly matching.

Posted on: 2016/7/24 13:29

Homlt Adventuary Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

#12

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Yeah! I'm connected from one pc to another - same network

Now need to get to work and check by internet :]

P.S. I don't want the hook - it is later maybe...

Posted on: 2016/7/25 21:55

Open Sirius Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

#13

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Success!! Linux MP over Internet now works!

Tested from Work my Linux Freelancer Home server using Internet

Open in new window

Thanks again Schmackbolzen for the clear and effective tutorial

Posted on: 2016/7/26 15:28

Open Sirius Mod

Re: Howto: Run the Freelancer game (SP, MP) and also the SERVER including FLHook on LINUX with Wine

#14

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That is nice to hear! I have updated the first post with the current testing results and also added that the game itself seems to work in SP and MP. I will keep it updated with the results getting posted here.

Posted on: 2016/7/26 15:59