Okay, this might not be the best of sane things, but anyhow. I recently dug up an oooold copy of Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns as it was ported by Loki back in the ninties.
Unortunately, even though the game installs, it is unplayable on todays Gentoo systems. It hard locks and segfaults. Bleh.
So, I decided to get it to work anyhow. First, installing sys-libs/lib-compat-loki will provide you with an ancient copy of glibc, necessary to run the ancient game.
This, you symlink into the game directory, something like this:
ld-linux.so.2 -> /lib/loki_ld-linux.so.2
libc.so.6 -> /usr/lib/loki_libc.so.6
libnss_files.so.2 -> /usr/lib/loki_libnss_files.so.2
Then you run the game with something like the following shellscript:
#!/bin/bash
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$_DIRECTORY_WHERE_I_INSTALLED_MY_GAME
./kohan --nocdrom --nomovies
Admitted, not a pretty solution.
Okay. then there is the bloody updater. It -will- fail no matter what. Sheesh. however, this can be hacked around :
install : games-util/loki_patch
Which will give you a local, working, binary copy of the loki patch utility.
Then download the patches ( Remember, you need the cumulative patches, ie. All versions ) for the game in question:
ftp://sunsite.dk/mirrors/lokigames/updates/kohan/
( or any of the other mirrors. planetmirror has them too )
Download the .run files, the md5sums and check.
export _POSIX2_VERSION="199209"
chmod +x kohan-1.2.0-x86.run
./kohan-1.2.0-x86.run --target patch
After which you get a pretty error :
loki_patch: dynamic-link.h:57: elf_get_dynamic_info: Assertion `! "bad dynamic tag"' failed.
"yey"
Now lets fix that :)
cd patch
cp /usr/bin/loki_patch bin/Linux/x86/loki_patch
./update.sh
--
Yey! it worked. Rinse and repeat.
My thoughts of the game? I like it, somewhat too simplistic controls over your men (takes too much clicking to make it "work" ) I miss the real 3D view of modern games (map rotation and tilt) And so on. For a game of the era, its nice.
There are still bugs, fex. whenever the game tries to change mode it gets an interlaced thing? Eew. fortunately ctrl+alt+return, ctrl+alt-+ until I have a 1024x768 resolution, then ctrl+alt+return again makes it sane.
Other issues is that it crashes / hangs from time to time. Especially if you cancel a mission, or progress from a mission with the status screen on. And that the videos crap up the resolution bigtime.
Questions?
Posted by spider at April 8, 2005 10:48 PM