A demo version of the second episode came as shareware on the first desktop my family bought, an old Acer, with Windows 95. I've recently gotten an Acer netbook and installed Ubuntu onto it. Someone made a little 3-level game based on Tyrian, and the memories flooded back. I loved this game.

So, has anyone tried to run it on Linux? I've got WINE, and it seemed to install ok. But after launching, it simply configures the video settings, and then nothing happens. I'm also somewhat new to Linux in general, so if anyone has any advice, that'd be great. I'd love to play this old favorite again.

Thanks

Edit: Ah. DOSBox. However, when attempting to mount the /home/username as instructed in the README with DOSBox, I'm not sure which directory to go to, the virtual C drive created by WINE, or the real location of the files.

If I understand you rightly, I think once you are in DOSBox you then need to navigate to location of the game as DOSBox would see it. In Windows I use DOSBox using the primary hard drive so that it navigates to the actual install path. I don't know if this is different for Linux, using WINE, however. I'd imagine that DOSBox is installed within WINE, so you would point it at the directory structure within WINE (which is probably your virtual drive) as the game would have been installed within WINE.

That sounds right, but after mounting the virtual drive (DOSBox is indeed installed within WINE), it doesn't recognize the folder as existing. The location is
c_drive/Program Files/GOG.com/Tyrian2000, but when I run the change directory command, it won't recognize it. It could be because of the space in "Program Files," so I'll try renaming some of the folders and running at again.

Two possibilities here then.

Let's assume you are correct in your diagnosis of the problem being the space in the full file pathname.

Firstly you can try changing directory in DOSBox by using quotes around the pathname to see if that picks up the space. Alternatively, I think long filenames within DOS get truncated to 8 characters long, so use the first 6 characters of the folder followed by ~1 and see if that gets you into the folder. If this still fails, install to a different folder structure where folders are limited to 8 characters long.

The other possibility is to use a DOSBox launcher application. I've seen some member post on forums here about an application called D-Fend or something similar that acts as a launcher for DOSBox games. If you can install this within your WINE environment then it might sort it out for you.

On a different note, why is it that you can't use the GOG shortcuts as provided by the installer? In Windows the GOG provided shortcuts start up DOSBox and load the game inside it for you.

Apologies to all as I am an absolute newbie and almost certainly barking up the wrong tree but have you considered installing Dosbox using the Linux version which should I think be in your repositories somewhere.

I found that I had problems under PCLinuxOs when installing Dosbox games from the repository in setting my graphics preferences until I caught on to configuring the Linux version as I had done my Windows version.

I suspect you'd have more joy playing with the options with the Linux version too.

Probably because GOG's installers are Windows installers, so have to be installed under Windows.

However, if he did the installation in WINE then I imagine (being as this is a DOS game so no registry settings needed for the game itself) that the files can be copied from the WINE partition to a new folder within the Linux file system. From here, just use the Linux DOSBox on the game's files. (Remove the game from WINE, though, using the uninstaller as it is then surplus).

I know this is an ancient post, but if anybody else comes looking for an answer, you just use wine to launch the windows installer. Go through that and it will install the dos files. Then in linux dosbox type mount c ~/.wine/drive_c, then type c: and you will be in your virtual drive c directory. From there you can cd into the GOG games directory and then the Tyrian 2000 directory. Once there you can go ahead and start the game.