Try New Technology

I recently moved my main workstation over to using Solus Budgie. Well I’m loving it, but one issue I found was playing some of my Steam games that were Windows only. I installed and tried to use PlayOnLinux and Lutris to load Grim Dawn or EverQuest 2 and the WINE containers they built would never work and have different issues. So in the long-run I just used PlayOnLinux to install Steam and then from inside of that copy of Steam (ie the Mono WINE) I have been downloading/installing my Windows only games.

EverQuest 2 – I had to set it to Extreme Performance to make it play smooth, but it does play smooth.
Grim Dawn – I cranked the setting pretty much up to max (2K resolution; fullscreen) and that is also a great play.
…I’ll update this list with any other Windows-only games I try this way, but so far it looks like most/all will work.

NOTE: Not to bash on Lutris or PlayOnLinux as I think both are great, but limited by Windows-only games.

To support Xbox controllers on the RetroPie image for Raspberry Pi 2 units please use the following. This may work for other controllers, but I have no way to test.

NOTE: Use ls /dev/input/ to make sure the “input_player#_joypad_index = ” values are correct. For most they should be js0, js1, etc. You could have something weird like js1, 2, etc at which point you will need to adjust the player1 from 0 to 1 and then so on and so forth.

Edit the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg file

Add the following to the end of the file

# Start
input_joypad_driver = linuxraw
input_player1_joypad_index = "0"
input_player1_up_axis = "-1"
input_player1_down_axis = "+1"
input_player1_left_axis = "-0"
input_player1_right_axis = "+0"
input_player1_a_btn = "0"
input_player1_b_btn = "1"
input_player1_x_btn = "2"
input_player1_y_btn = "3"
input_player1_select_btn = "6"
input_player1_start_btn = "7"
input_player2_joypad_index = "1"
input_player2_up_axis = "-1"
input_player2_down_axis = "+1"
input_player2_left_axis = "-0"
input_player2_right_axis = "+0"
input_player2_a_btn = "0"
input_player2_b_btn = "1"
input_player2_x_btn = "2"
input_player2_y_btn = "3"
input_player2_select_btn = "6"
input_player2_start_btn = "7"
input_player3_joypad_index = "2"
input_player3_up_axis = "-1"
input_player3_down_axis = "+1"
input_player3_left_axis = "-0"
input_player3_right_axis = "+0"
input_player3_a_btn = "0"
input_player3_b_btn = "1"
input_player3_x_btn = "2"
input_player3_y_btn = "3"
input_player3_select_btn = "6"
input_player3_start_btn = "7"
input_player4_joypad_index = "3"
input_player4_up_axis = "-1"
input_player4_down_axis = "+1"
input_player4_left_axis = "-0"
input_player4_right_axis = "+0"
input_player4_a_btn = "0"
input_player4_b_btn = "1"
input_player4_x_btn = "2"
input_player4_y_btn = "3"
input_player4_select_btn = "6"
input_player4_start_btn = "7"
input_exit_emulator_btn = "4"
input_menu_toggle_btn = "5"
# End

NOTE: I used http://howchoo.com/g/n2qyzdk5zdm/build-your-own-raspberry-pi-retro-gaming-rig to figure out how to build my RetroPie, though N64 isn’t working yet.

Dropping these links here so I will hopefully use them myself and maybe others that find this site will follow them to learn something (more) about Programming. I haven’t really looked into these links very far so do your own research as you start to learn.

CodeCombat – Learn how to code by playing a game – https://codecombat.com/
Games for programmings | CodinGame – http://www.codingame.com/start
Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share – http://scratch.mit.edu/
Learn to code | Codecademy – http://www.codecademy.com/
Learn | Code.org – http://code.org/learn
CS50: Introduction to Computer Science | edX – https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x#.VNYLwvnF_0c
List of free programming books and guides – https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md
Bento | Learn to code the way professionals do – https://www.bento.io/

The core server is up and running with Minecraft at the same time! We are running Minecraft in a ramdisk with a full auto-start on server reboot (if it ever happens). Nightly backups will be in place soon and followed by off-site backups using my Box.net account. Then off to get TF2 – Mann vs. Machine running…

Got the new 147GB 10k SCSI2 Hard drives installed and CentOS 6.3 rolling. Since RHEL 6 (and therefor CentOS 6.x) dropped support for Xen in favor of KVM I have decided to run MineCraft, TF2 MvM, etc. from the core OS as unprivileged users vs. learning a new visualization service. With a non-Xen Kernel and since my process supports PAE I can access the full 12GB of RAM directly even with a 32-bit OS.

I will be racking and finishing the base config this Monday with hopes to have MineCraft running by the following weekend!