When we moved to the new flat, I decided that I’d be setting up both my new and old laptops in my little ‘office’ so that I could run the Dell (Ubuntu) for my coding, any work stuff, browsing etc, and the old VAIO (WinXP) for gaming. However, the VAIO is not a gaming laptop by any standards, and while it supports games like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and Age of Empires it does tend to struggle a bit with more modern games. That, for some reason, includes the fairly old “Rise of Nations”, which requires 16MB video RAM.
So, not to be beaten (and so I don’t waste the epic 5.99 I spent on RoN) I’ve decided to try installing and running it on Ubuntu under Wine. Using Damon Kohler’s How to Run Rise of Nations with Wine guide — minus the disc ripping/mounting as I didn’t feel it necessary — it has thus far totally installed.
Now all I’ve got to do is try and run it… and I’m sure it’s some sort of blasphemy to get a Microsoft game running under Linux! :)
Update: it runs but with no sound (a known issue). Incidentally, I’ve just looked at the back of the box and noticed in the small print “Onboard/Integrated graphic chipsets and laptops are not supported
” … someone forgot to tell my Dell :)
24 Feb at 10:16 pm
I was so excited when I got World of Warcraft to run under Wine a couple years ago. Good stuff! I’m glad you got your games working.
24 Feb at 11:48 pm
Ironically enough, some games on Linux (Eve Online is one) run better on Wine than on the official Linux client. O_o
(loves Wine, btw)
24 Feb at 11:57 pm
I know for sure that Rise of Nations works on a MacBook Pro. :D But maybe you could get a small desktop compy?
25 Feb at 9:01 am
I had to read the title 3 times before I even began to understand what this post would be about. I was thinking about British wine, and to make it even worse I read ‘with’ as ‘white’. I guess it’s a combination of short nights, early mornings and lack of coffee ;)
Glad you got it to work though on your unsupported laptop
25 Feb at 9:03 am
At least you can get served with that kind of Wine :)
25 Feb at 5:51 pm
Yay RoN! go Jembubbles! also woot me first comment ever! on the website and also probally my last. And your laptop obviously didn’t get the memo.
26 Feb at 4:50 am
Hey it’s great that you took a shot at it! I’ve only tried MS Office and some one-off Windows apps. None of them required sound though. Bummer about it not working.
16 Mar at 2:22 am
I wondered down this trail to far to stop or turn around—I’m lost will someone out there shout and send up a flare so I can find my way back to reality. Don’t understand, this post, but here I am stuck in this comment box with nothing to add, but my igorance.