status of native linux client?

I am wondering about the status of the native Linux client for Tribes 2 working with tribesnext patches?

The native T2 linux port runs really well on Linux. I still play its offline mode on my age old machine

Last I checked, running it on wine is still a hassle and is still very crashy once you are past the problem of actually launching the game or signing in, plus wine is pretty dirty in general I think many of us would rather avoid using it

Comments

  • on an unrelated note.. i imagine the linux port of tribes 2 could be made to run on freebsd as well via freebsd's linux emulation
  • I was under the impression that most people playing on modern 64-bit systems today found running it on WINE to be plenty stable and easy to set up -- and I didn't find it particularly crashy when I was doing the same on my laptop with a fairly recent WINE version a few years ago.
    Haven't used the Loki client enough to compare in depth, but it was more or less the same amount of hassle last I did set it up (it's been ages), linking a few ancient libraries for compatibility and requiring extra work to get the audio working.

    As to playing the native client with TN... years ago I wrote an experimental patch to support the Loki dedicated server binary using a cryptographic library in native code rather than doing our account key authentication through a Ruby interpreter, but it had mainly been for my own testing. It's something I put to the side back then just because I didn't have the time, and when it's looked at again the priority will be to make sure it's fully functional for the server, but it could technically be made to work with the client; it'd just be a relatively trivial case of mapping the addresses for the handful of things in the binary it touches. Not something that's planned at all right now, but not entirely out of the question if there was interest in it.

    If you really want to play with the Loki client though, I'm pretty sure Bahke experimented with adding a Ruby process interface to it a while back. Should be on the forum somewhere... If you track that down, it should in theory get accounts working for you.
  • Running the Loki client carries its own tradeoffs. It's linked against positively ancient 32-bit Linux libraries, and the userspace ABI compatibility on Linux is notoriously bad (see snap/flatpak/etc.). It would be virtually mandatory to run it containerized on a modern Linux system. Wine looks cleaner than digging out a 2 decade old version of glibc and friends.

    If you want to go that route for TribesNext, the Ruby interpreter is largely only used to read certificates & encrypted private keys outside the game's mod file sandbox, run RSA cryptographic operations (encrypt/decrypt/keygen), and compute SHA1 hashes. The certificate root public keys for authentication and browser are embedded in the native DLL we've added to the game that you will need to extract, but if you're capable of adding Ruby to the Loki Linux port that'll be only a small impediment.

    I predominantly use Wine on macOS (pre-Catalina) to run the game and have had no real issues running it in the last few years.
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