Linux version

[tremby]

Is there an ETA on the Linux version?

[Toupee]

I'm curious as well.  I'd love to replay this when I get my Pandora.

Really love the game.  Just got my 20th trinket today!

[knocht]

So, ... is this going to be released or can we add VVVVVV to the list of games that promised Linux but failed to deliver?

[Terry]

I'm working on the linux version today. Hopefully it won't be much longer!

[dinx2582]

In the meantime, I've managed to get the full game working perfectly in Wine (dedicated/window mode only, apparently.  fullscreen crashes.).  Up until now only the demo would work properly, but I managed to rebuild the flash projector executable using movie.swf from the OS X build (had no luck decompiling the projector itself, had to use the OSX swf).

If you feel like doing it yourself, and have access to both the Win32 and the OSX build (legally, of course), it's not too hard:

$ wine VVVVVV.exe movie.swf

This loads movie.swf into the flash interpreter instead of the one embedded in the projector exe.  It should freeze at 1% loading.  Ignore that.  Just go to File, Create Projector, and then run that newly generated .exe file with wine and you're good to go.  Until the REAL linux version comes out, anyway.  

---

By the way, Terry,

You and souleye have certainly outdone yourselves  This game is an instant classic.  Thank you for the opportunity to experience it.

[snack]

Yes, the demo worked in Wine, but full game doesn't seem to. I could try this trick, but I don't know how to extract the .swf file from the Mac build. I can mount the .dmg file, but I think the main contents are in a .pkg file inside it. Well, I'll try other hacks in the mean time.

edit: I managed to use a thing called exe2swf to extract an swf file from VVVVVV.exe, but if I run "wine VVVVVV.exe VVVVVV.swf" and then generate a new .exe, the result is the same as just running the first command, i.e. it just shows a Window saying "press esc to exit fullscreen mode", or something.

[Terry]

I should have the patch ready soon, which will start in a window should make it easier to play from linux!

[NicePics13]

@dinx2582: I have the stunningly perfect OS X version of VVVVVV even successfully made a Wine friendly executable from the .swf following your guide. But the game is laggy with Wine and nothing I do to the settings seem to have any effect , even tried adding forcerefreshrate in regedit; a must for other directdraw games played on an LCD. The slowdown in reaction speed seem to come in regular intervals, feels almost synced
Couldn't test out the latest native flash player for linux (encrypted swf? Game stops loading at 1%). But surely native is the way to go? Even if the game would be laggy now, later updates to flash/xorg/the kernel could fix it?

[dinx2582]

@dinx2582: I have the stunningly perfect OS X version of VVVVVV even successfully made a Wine friendly executable from the .swf following your guide. But the game is laggy with Wine and nothing I do to the settings seem to have any effect , even tried adding forcerefreshrate in regedit; a must for other directdraw games played on an LCD. The slowdown in reaction speed seem to come in regular intervals, feels almost synced
Couldn't test out the latest native flash player for linux (encrypted swf? Game stops loading at 1%). But surely native is the way to go? Even if the game would be laggy now, later updates to flash/xorg/the kernel could fix it?

I suppose I jumped the gun a tiny bit when reporting on how this version performed while running in Wine.  In fact, I have the same issues as you do regarding the bits of slowdown, I just had forgotten to include that followup.  Might I suggest using the zoom function that comes with compiz-fusion?  This way it's not being upscaled, and I know that works well for other standalone flash games I play that exhibit nearly identical issues at higher display sizes, although it's hardly as much of a solution as it is a workaround.

I've tried the .swf in both flashplayer9 and 10 (amd64), and I feel like the 1% issue may have to do with the fact that the standalone flashplayer(s) are creating 32bit binaries, but I don't know enough about flash to know if that would actually present an issue, nor do I have a 32bit linux machine to test it out on at the moment.  I'm inclined to think it's not the cause simply because other games I've used it to create projectors for work fine in the same environment.

I think the lag itself is due to upscaling flash while in the standalone flash player, because slowdown that occurs for me in various games does not occur when I'm running the respective .swf files through Firefox (even with control-+ enlargement), although this obvious does not include VVVVVV.

EDIT:  I don't think encryption has anything to do with it, as the .swf reads fine in any ol' flash 10-capable decompiler (don't worry Terry, not actually interested in decompiling it ), and I would assume that encryption would prevent the internal components from showing on the decompiler's file content list.

[NicePics13]

Installed vanilla Wine 1.0 on my netbook running Debian Testing and there's almost no lag compared to latest Ubuntu with Wine 1.1.36

[Terry]

Installed vanilla Wine 1.0 on my netbook running Debian Testing and there's almost no lag compared to latest Ubuntu with Wine 1.1.36

That's very very good to know, thanks!

If anyone else reading this has tried this yet, could you post in this thread with the version of Wine you used and your results? I'm going to put together a help page for linux users.

[Kalir]

Mine doesn't work yet, but it's telling me something about not having properly installed the OpenGL drivers. I'll look at it when I have a bit more time.

[dinx2582]

Installed vanilla Wine 1.0 on my netbook running Debian Testing and there's almost no lag compared to latest Ubuntu with Wine 1.1.36

Interesting, as I upgraded to 1.1.36 from 1.0 because the wine wouldn't even so much as begin to draw the window, but the demo worked fine.  It was probably a problem on my end though seeing as how a flash projector is a flash projector is a flash projector.

[NicePics13]

Interesting, as I upgraded to 1.1.36 from 1.0 because the wine wouldn't even so much as begin to draw the window, but the demo worked fine.  It was probably a problem on my end though seeing as how a flash projector is a flash projector is a flash projector.

Even if Ubuntu is based on Debian the packages can be wildly different and compatibility has become less between the two. Intel video support is frankly crap in Ubuntu and I don't care for pulseaudio.

[dinx2582]

Even if Ubuntu is based on Debian the packages can be wildly different and compatibility has become less between the two. Intel video support is frankly crap in Ubuntu and I don't care for pulseaudio.

Right, there's no telling.  I simply did an apt-get install to update my Wine package, so at least I'm not having to worry about the whether or not a .deb is identical to the repository copy.

Intel video support isn't even crap, it's practically a joke.  Then again, relying on on-board video isn't a very wise thing to do these days.  Pulseaudio is alright, at least when the alternative is no audio thanks to broken OEM drivers.

--

Incidentally, I tested building/running the VVVVVV swf in a 32-bit virtual machine, and I'm sure I've gotten similar results as Terry, which is to say that it didn't work, but that doesn't really have anything to do with Wine.  If he can't get it working while in possession of the source code, I'm not too confident about what I could pull off with just a binary.