Jolt Country

I have fond memories of playing Future Boy! and Necrotic Drift on my Windows box of yore, and part of the charm of those games was the excellent music. I decided to give them a spin on my Linux system, and after downloading the Hugo Engine for Linux, I tried them out.

Unfortunately, the sound which I so loved back in the day is either unlistenable or absent. It's all garbled in Future Boy, and completely not there in Necrotic Drift. I haven't tried any other Hugo games with sound, but I have a feeling that those won't work much better.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does a workaround exist?

I will help investigate this. I don't have a system running Linux at the moment, but I'll ask around. I think One of the Bruces plays his games through Linux? Let me verify this. Not sure if Kent has logged on recently, but I will check with him as well.

hygraed, could you also please post the version of the Hugo run-time engine that you're using? Thanks!


Robb

Somebody posted a CD image of an ESCLinux installation, which I burned and booted a while back. If I recall correctly, I got it to run a Linux version of Hugo. I haven't booted it lately. I'm not even sure where the CD is, or where I found the download, so it would be a little difficult for me to test at the moment.

I do know that Hugo for Windows handles multimedia (sound included, I assume) entirely different than either Macintosh or Linux. I think it uses Direct-X (Jonsey, do you know?) It's possible that it's just an incompatible driver or something. I'm not sure Kent did the Linux port. If not, whoever did might have a better idea.

It's Hugo Engine 3.1.03 - the wxWidgets version. I'm using the gtk-static executable (there are like four in the download).

Also, ND has a tendency to spontaneously quit after I enter a command. It can be "t gibs" "get cable" or "hit skeleton with stand"; there doesn't seem to be a common factor in any of the commands. It's apparently random, and I never had that problem under Windows, so I don't think it's the game.

Which distrobution are you using?

I've used Hugo on both Debian, Ubuntu, (Ubuntu uses Debian as a base, so duh) and slackware without any problems.

Does sound work normally? Have you tried using the regular windows client under Wine?

Running a sound card or onboard (AC97)?

I'd try running the windows client, see if it works and if it doesn't, sing Chinese Opera by the failing moon light. Options are quite limited (and Chinese Opera is quite wonderful).

When I try to use the Windows client with WINE, I get this error upon loading Necrotic Drift:

Unable to initialize the audio device. Another application may be using the device, or it may not be configured properly.

Funnily, I'm not using any other applications to play sound.

I'm running Ubuntu Dapper with onboard sound (laptop). And it's cloudy tonight, so Chinese opera by the waning light of the moon is out. I can try tomorrow, though.

I'm going to have to look into this a little when I get more time. Obviously I don't see this myself (on Fedora Core-something), but it sounds reminiscent of something way back when I was experimenting with different sound formulations on Linux, including ESD.

I don't know if there's a way configuration-wise to select the sound subsystem. (There isn't for Hugo itself; it'll let you control the threading of the sound with a command-line switch, but I don't think that'll help anything here.)

hygraed, did you ever get sound to work in Drift?

Once I knock off some other things I've been meaning to do I'll try to find a spare PC and put Ubuntu on it so I can look at this myself.

Annnnnd seven months later I have not had the time to put together an Ubuntu installation.

I'll set a NEW bar: after the CGE I'll try to get this going. I found a spare motherboard I did not know I had, so if there is a CPU around (I think so) this'll be a snap.

I do use Ubuntu as my main OS at home, and there arn't any problems with running Hugo (or running multiple sound streams (mp3/video/website)) with sound.

You could still try using another driver for the sound card (AC 97, correct?) or just try updating to the newest version of Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn I think).

The next rev is "Feisty Fawn"? I love this open source stuff. That is so much cooler than "version 2.59 Warning: Unregistered!"

I just got a CD of Feisty Fawn in the mail. Sweet, sweet LiveCD goodness.