Category Archives: Open-Source

Saturday, 28 January, 2012

Wesnoth - Under the Burning Suns

Under the Burning Suns is my favourite Wesnoth mainline campaign. It has included RPG elements in the game. My favourite scenario is Across the Harsh Sands. It contains a number of surprises along the battle. It also keeps you on your toes with the ghosts that keep reappearing, although these ghosts sometimes ended up helping you fight against the enemies instead.

Two very important units will join your team in this scenario. First is the ultra cool Dust Devil and second is Elyssa the Fire Mage. You do not want to lose either of these two units.

Video replay of Across the Harsh Sands. I play the campaign in nightmare difficulty.


The next scenario A Stirring In The Night is probably the most difficult and epic scenario. It is also my next favourite scenario in this campaign. I barely complete this with the minimum of 6 camps still surviving. I have misunderstood the instruction and thought that as long as I control 6 camps at any time, it will be fine. This is not the case, as long as any enemy has captured the camp, the camp is considered lost even if you re-captured it later. I would have lost when the orcs capture my north-western camp, only the replay from the previous turn allow me to secure the camp.

I also needed to replay for Garak to survive the onslaught of Deathblade and Chocobone, and also for Dust Devil to survive. My Desert horseman Naru is the most luckiest unit in the whole campaign. Zyara, the Desert champion is the one that kept alive the north-western camp. He is killed by the Orcish ruler eventually.


Tags: fantasy, Game, strategy, rpg, video


Posted in Linux , Personal , Game , Open-Source


Monday, 19 December, 2011

Battle for Wesnoth in Android

Battle for Wesnoth is now available in the Android market. There is a free version and a paid one. For now, it is better to download and install the free Battle for Wesnoth version. The free version only contains the tutorial, it does not come with any other campaigns. But you can simply copy the missing campaigns and resources files from the same game in other computer systems like Linux, Windows etc.

The missing data files that are needed can be copied from these folders (in Linux):
/usr/share/wesnoth/data/campaigns
/usr/share/wesnoth/data/core/images
/usr/share/wesnoth/data/core/music
/usr/share/wesnoth/data/core/units

These files are copied to your Android folder
/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.androthsoft.battlefree/files/data (The data folder contains the sub-folders campaigns and core)


A screenshot

Tags: fantasy, Game, strategy, installation, Android


Posted in Linux , Personal , Game , Open-Source


Saturday, 19 February, 2011

Wesnoth 1.8 Squashfs

I compiled the Wesnoth game and its dependent libraries in Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2, and then created a Squashfs binary from the Wesnoth binaries.

The Wesnoth Squashfs binary is hosted in googlecode. (wesnoth-sfs)

To download it, use Mercurial to clone the repository, and then use the cat command to combine the multiple parts into the Squashfs binary wesnoth-1.8.5.sfs .

$ hg clone https://wesnoth-sfs.googlecode.com/hg/ wesnoth-sfs
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 11 changesets with 31 changes to 31 files
updating to branch default
31 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

$ cd wesnoth-sfs/
$ cat wesnoth-1.8.5.sfs.* > wesnoth-1.8.5.sfs



I have also tested the binary in Ubuntu Maverick using the below steps.


$ mkdir wesnoth
$ sudo mount wesnoth-1.8.5.sfs wesnoth -t squashfs -o loop

$ cd wesnoth/usr/local/bin
$ ./wesnoth -f ../share/wesnoth/

Others dependent libraries compiled in Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2:
libSDL-1.2.tar.gz
liboggvorbis.tar.gz

Tags: Ubuntu, Puppy-Linux, testing, installation, Linux, fantasy, Game, strategy


Posted in Linux , Personal , Game , Open-Source


Thursday, 3 February, 2011

Install Ubuntu Netbook on MSI Wind

I installed the Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my MSI Wind successfully. There are some minor problems along the way, but the final product looks good! Applications can use the maximum vertical screen space.

The installation of Ubuntu Netbook Maverick version overwrites my old Jaunty version, but without overwriting any of my personal data files.

There is a problem in booting up from the usb stick initially. The problem is detailed here: Maverick images burned to usb key on lucid fail to boot - different syslinux version The solution to it is simple, modify the file /syslinux/syslinux.cfg (in the usb) by removing the "ui" keyword, and after that, the boot up should proceed fine.

Related:
Install Ubuntu on MSI Wind (Jaunty version)

Tags: MSI-Wind, Ubuntu, netbook, testing, installation, Linux


Posted in Mobile , Linux , Personal , Technology , Open-Source


Saturday, 4 December, 2010

Amazon Kindle for PC Runs under Wine

Amazon Kindle for PC can run under Wine in Linux. I am using Wine 1.3.6 in Puppy Linux.
The latest KindleForPC version is 1.3.0 , and the file size is 12850600 .

To install, just run:

# wine KindleForPC-installer.exe


To run the KindleForPC from a terminal:

# wine "C:\Program Files\Amazon\Kindle For PC\KindleForPC.exe"

To be able to login to my Amazon account, I need to get Secure HTTPS working under Wine.

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, testing, installation, WINE, Amazon, kindle


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Saturday, 4 December, 2010

Secure HTTPS under Wine

I am using Wine 1.3.6 , installed from wine-1.3.6.pet found at http://puppylinux.org/wikka/wine
Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems.

With the default installation, secure https does not work.
When I run the builtin Internet Explorer and navigate to a https://url , I will see this error "wininet:NETCON_secure_connect SSL_connect failed: 12169" in the terminal.

From Microsoft WinINet functions error codes, the error is SSL certificate is invalid.

# wine iexplore
..
err:wininet:NETCON_secure_connect SSL_connect failed: 12169

It appears that Wine requires the root certificates to be installed in Linux. After I downloaded the VeriSign root certificates and copied all the *.pem into the dir /etc/ssl/certs , then secure https works under Wine.

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, testing, installation, WINE


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Monday, 22 November, 2010

Testing Puppy Linux

I am running the latest Puppy Linux from the CD. Once the PC boots up from the CD, I can start using it. There is no installation steps! Pretty fast also!

Puppy will run totally in RAM. When you shutdown for the first time, Puppy will ask you where you want to save your personal files and settings. Puppy will see what is available and will display a menu and you just choose what you want. It's pretty simple. You can choose to save to the hard drive, or a plug-in USB drive.

It does not detect my USB mobile broadband modem (Huawei E180) automatically though. There are some system modules that are not loaded. The below steps are needed before the modem is detected (run the commands on a terminal):
modprobe usbserial
modprobe option
  1. Click on the connect icon on the Desktop
  2. It will display the Internet Connection Wizard the first time. Click on the Internet by dialup analog or wireless modem
  3. In the PupDial modem Internet Dialer, click on Choose button , and then click on the Probe button to automatically probe and setup the modem. If the USB modem is correctly detected, then the modem device will be /dev/ttyUSB0
  4. Edit the settings for Singtel mobile (Account 1 in the screenshot). Click connect.


I have an old wireless USB adapter from DLink, DWL-G120 bought years back for my old Windows. I remember that there is no Linux support for it at that time. The DWL-G120 is now supported! The system will load p54usb module and can autodetect it. Hooray! :)

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, wireless-network, testing, installation


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source