Jul 31, 2007
Playing Langrisser I on Ubuntu
BY DERRICK SOBODASH
oftAction’s edition of Langrisser I was the most notoriously difficult game to run that I ever bothered translating. Even now, four years later, there are still support requests posted at the Clouds of El Sallia BBS.
Given the myriad of DirectX errors associated with the game, getting it operating on Linux seemed like an impossible task. It broke versions 4, 5 and 6 of VMWare, and Wine … forget about it. You would need to burn the CD or hack your kernel to compile in the cdemu patch, and even still, the font rendering would just be disastrous — assuming it even ran.
That’s when I stumbled on VirtualBox, a great x86 machine emulator that, in many ways, beats the pants of VMWare — as long as you only want to run Windows. Forget about getting it to boot QNX and other odd operating systems, though the free VMWare Player won’t boot those either.
To get started, you will need the following:
- A machine running Ubuntu Linux. This was tested on Feisty.
- One Windows XP CD.
- One copy of the Daemon Tools freeware CD emulator.
- At least 3GB of free disk space, possibly 2GB.
- A disc image of Langrisser I — either CUE/BIN or CUE/WAV.
- An hour of free time.
First off, head to the VirtualBox download folder. Ubuntu users will want to grab the file “virtualbox_1.4.0-21864_Ubuntu_feisty_i386.deb”, or the amd64 one if running on a 64-bit architecture chip. Double click the package to run it with GDebi installer. Install. You may be required to reboot to activate the kernel module.
Next, click your Applications menu and find the new “innotek VirtualBox” item. Click on it, and VirtualBox will start up for the first time. Click the “New” button, then “Next.” Name your new operating system whatever you want, and pick “Windows XP” from the OS Type drop-down list. Set a memory size of 128MB, then pick to create a new Hard Disk of 3GB.
After you finish out the menu, you will see a new entry in VirtualBox. Click on it, then click the “Settings” button. Adjust the video memory slider so the OS has at least 8MB. Check through the options until you get down to Network. Make sure network is enabled and attached to NAT. Now click down to Shared Folders and click the “+” icon on the right. Share the folder your Langrisser image is in and set Folder Name to “shared.”
Insert your Windows XP CD-ROM in your drive and start the virtual machine. Format the hard disk as one big FAT32 and finish out the installer. East Asian fonts will not be needed for this game.
Once Windows is up, click the Devices menu in the VirtualBox menu bar and change your mounted disc to be a local ISO, /opt/VirtualBox-1.4.0/additions/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso. Windows should automatically begin installing the VirtualBox drivers. Reboot, and you will now have a cursor that floats with the rest of your screen.
Drop Daemon Tools in your Langrisser I folder. Then open a command prompt on Windows XP and type “net add l: \\vboxsvr\shared” — the command to mount a network share. This will create a new L: network drive which is connected to your host folder with Langrisser.
Double-click the Daemon Tools EXE in L:\ and install it. Reboot. Browse to L:\ again and copy your Langrisser image to some location on your C:\. Right click the Daemon Tools icon in the system tray and mount the Langrisser image. The installer should begin.
When the installer is finished, copy Arigato’s drive patch to C:\Program Files\SoftAction\Langrisser I\ and run it. Change your drive letter from D: to E:.
You’re all set! Langrisser I will now run perfectly in Ubuntu and in a window. I never thought I would see the day when it could run in a Window given all its bad programming …
The best part is, VirtualBox’s kernel module allows it to execute its commands at Level 1 of the operating system instead of Level 3 like VMWare. This means for people on older systems, you can get 95% of the power in your virtual machine that you do on an actual Windows XP host installation. As long as you have an 800MHz processor or better, Langrisser I will run at full speed this way. 
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