The League of Magnificent Scoundrels

A friend of mine asked me how to install ScummVM from a daily build. Since I myself had not done this before, I thought I would write a little tutorial. For those who do not know (and who do not necessarily want to click the link above), ScummVM is “an implementation of LucasArts SCUMM interpreter”.

Requirements

First, we must clear any requirements that ScummVM needs in order to build. Luckily, there are only a few required dependencies: SDL 1.2.x and build-essential which are both in the Ubuntu repositories. The rest of the optional requirements are (as of Ubuntu 10.04) already installed. These are:

• flac: required to play compressed games without quality loss
• libmad: libmad is for playing mp3-compressed games
• libogg and libvorbis: to play OGG-Vorbis-compressed games
• libmpeg2: some games use re-recoded cutscenes

One thing I always do when setting up my environment to build an application is make sure that the dependencies are installed, whether or not I think they are:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian flac libmad0 libogg0 libvorbis0a libmpeg2-4

The line above will install the required dependency as well as the optional dependencies if they are not available. If you do not want to install one of the optional dependencies, do not add its name into the list.

Source Files

We are now ready to grab the latest sources for ScummVM. They are available from this website. Download the newest source, which generally shows up first on the list. Make sure you download from the “Source” column. For this tutorial, I decided to move the downloaded file from my Downloads to ~/Desktop/tmp/

After this is downloaded, extract it to an empty folder. When the extraction is complete, you should have a scummvm folder with its contents. To extract via the Terminal (file name will be different for you):

$ bunzip2 scummvm-20100727.bz2
$ tar -xvf scummvm-20100727.tar
$ cd scummvm

You will notice that the above shows us changing the directory (cd) to the newly unarchived folder. From here we will want to make sure that our machine has everything needed for building. We do this by running the configure file. If this completes successfully, we will then run make to compile, and make install to install the application on our system.

(If you do not want to install this, you can still run it from this folder with ./scummvm. You won’t need to do the “&& make install”)

$ ./configure
$ sudo make && make install

After this is complete, you should be able to now run scummvm. If you run into any problems, please let me know and I will do what I can to help you.

I play Unreal Tournament GOTY (Game of the Year) with my lady Amoureux, and switching Dral (my laptop) to Ubuntu 7.10 posed a problem: I knew UT worked in Linux, but had never tried on a Debian-based install.

My first problem was that I didn’t have my discs available, as they’re in storage. After a few (six+) hours of searching the Internet and mainly the Ubuntu Forums, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fate of waiting until I could get a hold of my discs. However, I am not one to give up so easily, so I decided to do something that people didn’t seem to think of doing when they have problems with their cd install; install by using an existing playable copy.

The first step is to download the Linux binaries. There are two choices: Standard UT and UT GOTY. These are binaries to install version 436. To install from disc all you have to do is follow the instructions given by the binary of your choice.

Once you download your binary, right click on it and go to Properties, then Permissions. Check the “Allow executing file as program” and click close, then double click the .run file and press “Run in Terminal”.

I left everything as default (had to uncheck and recheck symbolic link for ‘Begin Install’ to open), and clicked Begin. When prompted for disc one, I opened a new terminal and went to the install directory, and copied the ut folder to ut-tmp. There may have been a .loki folder created in your home directory (/home/username/.loki) but it seems to be a hit or miss, so I am not going to back it up here; instead I am going to make it later.

tlm@Dral:~$ cd /usr/local/games
tlm@Dral:/usr/local/games$ cp -r ut ut-tmp

I hit ‘No’ and then ‘Exit’. This deleted everything in the ut folder. Do not do anything to the ut-tmp just yet.

Now we need to grab the files from a Windows install. For speed, I copied c:\UnrealTournament to an external hard drive and then plugged it in to Dral. If you are doing it networked, make sure you have Samba installed. Copy everything but the System folder.

From external HDD:
tlm@Dral:~$ cd /media/disk/UnrealTournament
tlm@Dral:/media/disk/UnrealTournament$ ls
Help Maps Music Sounds System Textures Web
tlm@Dral:/media/disk/UnrealTournament$ cp -r Help /usr/local/games/ut/Help && cp -r Maps /usr/local/games/ut/Maps && cp -r Music /usr/local/games/ut/Music && cp -r Sounds /usr/local/games/ut/Sounds && cp -r Textures /usr/local/games/ut/Textures && cp -r Web /usr/local/games/ut/Web

Then only .u files from System to System.

tlm@Dral:/media/disk/UnrealTournament/System$ mkdir /usr/local/games/ut/System
tlm@Dral:/media/disk/UnrealTournament$ cp System/*.u /usr/local/games/ut/System

Now we can move the temp files into the ut folder.

tlm@Dral:/media/disk/UnrealTournament/System$ cd /usr/local/games
tlm@Dral:/usr/local/games$ cp -r ut-tmp/* ut

Run Unreal Tournament by going into ut and typing ‘./ut’ – if that does not work then go to System and type ‘./ut-bin’.

For networked install you’d just browse to the computer hosting the files.

tlm@Dral:cd smb://jane/Documents/UnrealTournament

From there you would do the steps outlined above.

When it is run, it creates a folder in your home directory, .loki (/home/user/.loki) – this is where your UnrealTournament.ini and User.ini files are, which is where your preferences are saved when you edit them in-game. It is also where you will need to modify to change game preferences.

Everything works, and upon loading it a second time, notice that it is moving way too fast to play. There is a setting to reduce game speed inside the game but this will not work well for networked games. The way I am currently slowing the game down is by using this script. Before downloading this you should rename your original ut script to ut.original or anything else, so you don’t override it, and don’t forget to enable the ability to run as a program. The gripe I have with this way is that I can see a heart-beat like stutter, which can get annoying. I also have sound issues, which I have found no fix for yet. The sound issue only seemed to happen after changing the resolution from 640×480 to 1280×800, and doesn’t change no matter what I do anymore.

During the time I was reading about various UT related problems, I stumbled across UTGLR, an enhanced OpenGL renderer, which I use and love. I found a compiled .so file over at BeyondUnreal’s forum.

If you want to use it, save the OpenGLDrv.so in your ut/System folder. You may want to back up your existing one just in case this does not work for you. I copy/pasted his OpenGLDrv settings over my own in my UnrealTournament.ini, changing GammaOffset=0.500000 to GammaOffset=0.100000. While we are in the .ini file, we will also want to go to Engine.Engine and change all three SDLGLDrv.SDLGLRenderDevice to OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice

As it stands right now, UnrealTournament works and is almost playable.

Useful Resources:
-Bonus Packs
– “UT Bonus Pack 1″:http://official.beyondunreal.com/dl.php/official/ut/utbonuspack.zip
– “UT Bonus Pack 2″:http://official.beyondunreal.com/dl.php/official/ut/utbonuspack2.zip
– “UT Bonus Pack 3″:http://official.beyondunreal.com/dl.php/official/ut/utinoxxpacknoumod.zip
– “UT Bonus Pack 4″:http://official.beyondunreal.com/dl.php/official/ut/utbonuspack4.zip
“How To: play Unreal Tournament GOTY in Edgy“

I recently stumbled upon a website that spoke of how the FBI was able to crack a 128bit WEP password in 3-4 minutes. In this article, I am going to go through the steps (in a more condensed form from what is beyond the link) so that you can audit your wireless network, or spread the word to wireless network administrators you may know.

The programs that are listed here will most likely not be too friendly for anyone unfamiliar with Linux, as most, if not all of the programs are on *nix platforms. If all else fails, or if you’re adamant about wanting to do this yourself, you could easily just Google for help, or alternatively RTFM.

1. Run Kismet to target nearby networks and obtain SSID and channel.
2. Run Airodump to capture data.
3. Use Aireplay to replay a packet on targeted network. (Finding a good packet requires looking at the BSSID MAC on Kismet and comparing it to the captured packet’s BSSID MAC.)
4. Airodump should start getting a lot of new IVs.
5. 1,000 IVs is probably enough so you can stop there if you wish.
6. Run Aircrack on the captured file.
7. A WEP key should show up shortly!

Programs: Kismet, Aircrack (includes Airodump, Aireplay, Aircrack, and Airdecap).