Setting up UO Excelsior Shard on Linux (Lubuntu)

[Alesorta]

Hello,

I am new to the shard (not UO) and I would like to install everything on my machine (Lubuntu 14.04).

Few questions:

1 - I have seen that UO Excelsior has a dedicated client (the pre-patched one). If I use it to install UO will I be able to play on multiple shards?

2 - UO assist is now UOSteam. I surfed through the net and I have noticed that it seems to be a bit more complicated to set up, especially on linux. Does anybody know the exact procedure to install it?

3 - It has been ages since last time I played UO on Linux. I have found a guide (http://www.uogamers.com/community/index ... ds/537196/). Is it good for UO Excelsior?

Thanks a lot

[Omeni]

I play on a Ubuntu 14.04 Virtual machine, so I can play on multiple machines. It runs fine with uoex and razor, Havnt tryed UOS yet.

[Alesorta]

As expected I am encountering some problems.

I have followed this guide up until point 2.

Then, when the window of UO Ex pops-up, I click on "Install" in the drive z:// (which I presume is the virtual drive of PlayOnLinux?)

After a while, it says that there is an error and the software was not able to create a folder for UO.

Help, please?

[Shindaril]

Hiya, without knowing better, I'd assume that error is due to read/write permissions. You most likely installed the software as root and now you're trying to install UO as an user. This is only a guess as you don't tell what the error message was, which would help narrowing the possibilities down.

[Alesorta]

I have tried to install again. This is the screenshot of the error

[Shindaril]

Alright, I did some reading on PlayOnLinux (never used it before, just plain old wine and later on winetricks to help on some things (run dll's mainly). I also do say that it's been some time since I played with wine even though I do run debian on my other laptop, I do all my playing mainly on my windows laptop.

It appears that the Z: is a virtual drive inside the wine and allows you to access your linux installation for installers and media mainly. Z: should be mapped to / . I'm not entirely certain at the moment, how wine works with it's virtual drives, but there used to be C: virtual drive where you did your installations under wine. Naturally, you were able to add in more, but there's no reason to have more virtual hard drives under wine. It's also very useful to make virtual drives for your optical drives as well as USB ports, if you wish to use optical disks or installers from USB drives/keys.

Anyway, Z: linked to your root ( / ) folder of your linux installation and is most likely write protected as a security issue. I do know that PlayOnLinux is only a graphical frontend for wine and based on what I did find on their website, their documentation is pretty...incomplete, which does leave a lot of questions, but my guess is that the Z: virtual drive is write protected and you're missing the wine's writable virtual drive (usually c: ).

Did you install PlayOnLinux from repository or straight from a installer file or did you recompile it from the source code?
There's repository for Ubuntu which should work with Lubuntu as well and I do assume that it does all the setup for you, but I might be wrong as well. Didn't find any install instructions from the site, so the only thing I did find was what was said on the downloads page under Ubuntu: "Ubuntu Precise (and superior) users : You must install the package wine:i386 to get PlayOnLinux working" Maybe you're just missing this package?

[Alesorta]

I actually downloaded PoL via the Lubuntu Software Center (the built-in marketplace for software). I am not an expert but I think I should try the following:

- Uninstall PoL and gather a new installation file via their website (I assume is the most updated version)
OR
- Check if I am missing the wine:i386 package (no idea how to do it)
OR
- Change permission of the z: and make it writable (I am kinda scared to work on permissions...)

[Shindaril]

The first two, I agree with, but I wouldn't change permissions for Z: as it's the only thing between wine ( and possible windows viruses and malware ) and your linux system. I'd rather encourage you to read the wine manuals and add that missing virtual drive if the first two things you listed won't do that for you.

[Alesorta]

Ok, I managed to do it.

Here the procedure for everybody to know (clean installation without razor/assistUO)

1 - Install PlayOnLinux via terminal using the commands you can find at https://www.playonlinux.com/en/download.html.

2 - Follow the steps 1 and 2 you can find at http://www.uogamers.com/community/index ... ds/537196/

3 - Select the C: drive when required (not the z:!!)

4 - Play the game.

I just figured it out so only the time will say if everything work correctly. In the meantime, see you in game .

Btw, is there a favorite tool used by the community to communicate or the one used is the built-in chat?

[Shindaril]

I'm glad you got it all figured out and running.

I'd assume that most players use three commands in game to communicate: [c for public world chat, [pm for private messages and [g for guild chat.

[lestatzero]

1 - I have seen that UO Excelsior has a dedicated client (the pre-patched one). If I use it to install UO will I be able to play on multiple shards?

To answer this question in short. NO the client that is used here at uoex is specific to this shard as it has several customized files that are tuned to specific edits on the shard server. You will likley have to find a different client ( in many cases unique for each shard) to play on different servers. I know many of them use customized clients with edits to items and map data.

Hope this helps.

Lestat

[Shindaril]

lestatzero's right about that. Took me a while to re-memorize all the windows file system tricks, but if it's still possible under wine to define the working directory, you should be able to install a plain UO client and patch it up, then download the custom files of Excelsior and put those inside a custom folder under the UO install directory and point the "Start in" line of the shortcut into that custom folder. That way the shortcut uses (or at least used to) should use the files in that folder before looking for the needed files from the parent folders.

As I said, this trick might not work in wine anymore, but it's worth the shot if you intend to play on multiple shards at the same time, so you can avoid manually replacing those files every time you wish to change the shard or the need for multiple installations of the client, one for each shard you wish to play on.

My apologies for not getting into this earlier, was more concerned about getting your game running and working so that you could log in in the first place.

[lestatzero]

I am personally not a Big wine user I use VM instead and the client / etc all runs under my vm config just fine. ( but using vm is not for everyone i know as you do need a legit copy of windows for the vm to be installed correctly ) ...

but what you just suggested Shindaril will not work for Uoex as the client files pritty much all of them have been patched with updated content and edits ... And many shards are running on newer client versions than ours anyway.. But asside from that glad you were able to get it all working and such ...

Lestat

[Shindaril]

lestatzero, if it still works, it's all about isolating the modified files and putting them into the "start in" - override folder and pointing the shortcut to look into that folder first. It's true that there are many custom files on the shard and to know exactly which ones besides hues.mul are changed, would be a question directed to the staff. My trick is solely based on whether or not that override folder trick still applies on wine or not. All I can say is that it used to work if you got all the files sorted out. Just giving one option which I'm not certain of, but it's the best I can personally offer as a solution for what was asked for. Also, as I said, it's also possible to have multiple installations of the client for each shard, but that would require hard disk space and most likely cause problems with virtual memory usage if wine still suffers from the ram memory leaks it had couple of years ago.

Just one possible way to do it, not guaranteed for success. A trick, hack...whatever you wish to call it.

[lestatzero]

Shindaril - I just tested the start in work around in wine and it does still work however the "Patch Folder' has almost every Mul In it... So it wld be prudent to sacrafice the space required to just keep the Uoex client as a self contained version in my opinion but it does work... Not to say that method wouldnt be a good idea for other shards.

On the virtual Ram issue ... The issue I have found is a Memory hole within the 5.0.9.1 client its self in the stat that it s in. This is something that was likley caused by uo fiddler when +Nyx made the patch updates as a few of the hex lines saved incorrectly... ( an unfortunate side effect of adding custom data) ... from some of her post's that shes made and comments I think she has found or corrected some of this by moving some things around to make it more stable but with razor I have successfully launched and ran 6 clients on my system with 8 gigs of ram allocated to this vm without 1 crashed client fixing the incorrect index in the anim.mul and anim3.mul file and one that was in the tiledata.mul. (Total memory usage per client is only around 65meg )

We may likley see these bugs go away with her next update as 2 of the 3 errors fixed themselves with a reconstruction of the mul's one i had to use a binary editor to fix ( the one in the tiledata.mul) .. The mul issue has to do with how fiddler and the other tools handle the mul files ... Upper memory addresses are fine but they have a chance to corrupt as you get further down the address tree...


Great topic however ...

Lestat