Aquaria Demo - Linux & Wine (good news!)

[Praadur]

I've spent a little while playing Aquaria and I can report that it seems to run well, I'd say a complete sucess!

My first test was with the wine version on the official Ubuntu repositories, which is version 0.9.46.  That didn't go so well at all, so at first I was worried.  I didn't have a mouse cursor in game for one thing, I didn't have the beginner's tips either, and the minimap was a bit glitchy, but everything else (including sound) worked beautifully.  I tinkered with the options for a while but I didn't have much luck, so I decided to try running it with wine version 0.9.50 off the wine repositories.

And what a difference that made!

With 0.9.50, I was able to fully play every facet of Aquaria, at least as far as I could tell.  The mouse cursor, music, tips, minimap, song menu, all other menus, movement, full graphics--pretty much everything I could test, really--all went swimmingly.  I even had further success when tweaking the init.cfg.  I'm running Ubuntu on a laptop (a 7004-series Acer, and Aquaria runs very well on it despite it having humble specs), one with a widescreen, so the resolutions didn't exactly fit for me.  I did find however that the gmae could redaily accept resolutions of 1280x800 and 1440x900 by simply dropping them into the cfg.  I can't help but wonder why they're not in the game's config-app, considering that the game quite happily supports these resolutions without any problems (as far as I could tell).

Basically, I'm convinced enough that Aquaria runs beautifully under wine, so I'm about ready to buy it... but (and some of you lkely knew this was coming) I'm worried about the anti-piracy wrapper that Aquaria's full version might use.  Could I enquire as to which it is so I could do some research as to whether wine is compatible with it or not?  If not, has anyone tried running the full version in wine, and if so, what results did you get?

I'm sorry if this topic has been covered, I did do a search but I didn't come up with anything other than older posts in the supported platforms thread, and a few others even less related, so I decided to post this question myself.  I think that this is a good question to ask as the answer opens the door to members of the Linux userbase (like myself) who'd like to play the game.  As if there aren't any concerns with the question I've raised, just about anyone with a half-decent computer capable of running wine 0.9.50 (with a default loadout, no windows files nessescary) will be able to do so.

[luciferin]

As far as I know there is no anti-piracy, other than a key code you put in at the beginning.  Now mind you I do get an error when I try to run the full version under wine but I am running 0.9.49.  I'll reboot and try the demo and see if I have any luck with that so I can get you a better answer.  If it's not the copy protection giving me an exception then you'll have to wait until I compile Wine from the repository to try it out, unless you want to buy it before hand.

Alec and Derek:  If it runs under Wine this doesn't mean you wont support us with a native version, does it?

[Alec]

If it doesn't work (and you don't already have it) try it with the patch.

[luciferin]

Doh!  Well the patch fixed the exception I was having, so Wine & Linux seems to require it.  Also the registration requires Gecko to be installed (I guess it uses a web-app to authenticate).  However I can't get it to accept my name and code, it just refreshes the screen like I didn't type in anything.  Do you only allow one activation per person or is there a bug with the authentication?  I've already installed it under Windows and spent a good twenty minutes ogling the water effect when Naija spins

[dg10050]

I'm wondering the same thing about how many activations we get. I personally have 4 Operating systems that I switch between and I'd like to be able to play my registered copy on each one.

[EntiteFred]

It doesn't work under wine for me (full version)... well, it works, but I can't enter my username correctly.  My name contains the character "e with an accent"

[Praadur]

Thanks for all the updates, chaps, it really is helpful!

Luciferin, you shouldn't have to actually compile wine as the latest has been available in binary form on their official repos for a little while now.  It should just be a matter of adding their servers to your apt sources, then a standard apt-get install should update it to the latest version.

Fred, I might be wrong but that problem might be fixable by installing the msttcorefonts package?  I think Gnome's default font-pack can't deal with non-standard characters, so that's why having that might help.  Just a thought I figured I'd share, anyway!

As for the wrapper, it sounds promising!  I'll likely buy the game soon enough anyway and test it myself, and if worst comes to worst then I might be able to find some way to get around it, much like I had to with Sam & Max (which worked beautifully except for the wrapper).  It'd probably be easier on everyone if I were to just have a Windows partition, but I have great respect for this beast of burden we know as the machine and I simply cannot curse another with Windows.  It's like painting a happy face and a twirly moustache on a fabrege egg.  I wouldn't hold anyone else to that of course, it's just how I feel about it.

Well, once I'm done completing the demo, I'll very likely buy the game whether there's news here or not, and if there isn't then I'll report back with my findings.

[luciferin]

I'm running Arch linux, actually, not Ubuntu.  0.9.50 just made it into their repo's this morning.  I have the same problem with the registration window not accepting my Username and key.  I don't really know if this is a limitation of Gecko (very likely) or because the only allow a single activation (unlikely).

The only solution I see is to somehow bypass the activation, which is probably why Alec's remained quiet on the matter.  I was hoping that maybe your information was stored in a local file so I could just add it in there to launch, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Praadur]

Ah, sorry Lucif... I tend to assume automatically that all distros can do deb/rpm, if that were the case then any distro with that support could get the releases from the official wine servers.  It's a silly assumption to make really and I look all the more foolish for it, I'll try to stop that.

Anyway, I had suspected as much.  The kind of protection that Aquaria uses sounds like the kind of web-wrapper protection which the Sam & Max games also used, wherein the player has to login to a remote server, a signal is sent back to the wrapper and the game is launched from there.  Wine seems to be incompatible with these wrappers, unfortunately.

To put this in the most blunt of terms, I had to crack the Sam & Max episodes I'd bought.  After that, they ran beautifully.  I can fully understand, of course, why small companies use systems like that to protect their assets, but it usually means that a perfectly functional game becomes inacessible on an unsupported platform.  Again, that's undersandable too, considering that Linux isn't officially supported, but it is always a shame.

If I want my chance to play Aquaria, I might have to wait for a similar scenario to arise here.  I hope Alec & Derek won't think too little of me for that, because I really, really want to play this game, but that might be my only means.

Of course, should I do that, it's probably not best that I report back with my results, as it could be taken the wrong way... but considering that the demo runs beautifully and that the wrapper seems to be the only issue, I can pretty much surmise how that test would go, just so others will know for future reference.  Under those circumstances, Aquaria to be played under Linux would probably be a pretty safe bet and a worthy purchase!

[keturn]

Neat!  This let me play the demo, and I'm hooked.  Unfortunately, wine versions seem very fickle (i.e. the upgrade to get Aquaria working caused regressions in other apps), so as much as I'd love to continue past the demo, I think I'll wait a bit to hear what news there is on a Linux package.

[Plaid Phantom]

I'm dual-booting XP & Ubuntu and just ran the already-installed Aquaria through Wine.  It asked me for my Reg key again, but after that, it's almost like I'm in Windows.   The only problem I'm having is that I have a fast click that Wine has trouble registering.  This isn't a problem in Win/Aquaria.  I'm guessing there's some sort of config for it; this is my first use of Wine, so I just don't know.  It could be that my processor is finally starting to show its age. (Plasma Pong was very jittery, but then that's Plasma Pong for you.)

How do I tell Wine to run it in full screen?  I'm running with 1024x768 on a 1280x1024 monitor and it runs windowed.

[realyst]

It doesn't work under wine for me (full version)... well, it works, but I can't enter my username correctly.  My name contains the character "

[Alec]

Haha, not French Canadian, but Canadian... (although I did take french immersion!)

I don't know it just never occurred to me that people would use accents for some reason. The in-game font is just a really simple A-Z, 0-9 kinda thing.

Sorry about that!

[realyst]

Bah, c'est la vie, I guess

I really should have known better then to put the

[luciferin]

How do I tell Wine to run it in full screen?  I'm running with 1024x768 on a 1280x1024 monitor and it runs windowed.

Make sure you selected Full screen in the Aquaria settings.  Otherwise, try playing around with winecfg under the graphics tab.  Select the "Allow window manager to manage windows" radio.

I'm still having troubling activating   I've typed in my name and key 100 times..