P=NP!

Diablo 3 Public Test Realm (PTR) and Wine

(Killer-?)Spiele, Nerdismus No Responses »

Sep 242012

As I just stumbled over this little issue, I thought it might be worth sharing.

So I am playing Diablo 3 using wine and was willing to give the just recently released PTR a shot. Having downloaded and installed the client using the awesome PlayOnLinux (which I absolutely recommend if you are into Linux gaming!), I wanted to use the same procedure as for the normal client for starting, i.e. directly launching “Diablo III.exe -launch” and automatically applying a few tweaks which get rid of ugly stuttering.

For the vanilla client, my launch script looks as follows:
#!/bin/bash cd ~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/DiabloIII/drive_c/Program\ Files/Diablo\ III export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/DiabloIII setarch i386 -3 ~/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-amd64/1.5.5-DiabloIII_v3/bin/wine "Diablo III.exe" -launch & pid=$! taskset -cp 1 $pid 1> log1.log 2> log2.log && fg
where taskset is used to limit the game to just one cpu core, as multicore usage seems to be just not as good as it should. Using the full four cores of my machine results in a somehow jittery experience.

So now I wanted to use just the same script for the PTR, as just having a shortcut for launching it is a nice thing. So I copied it and changed the paths appropriately, but what was that? It didn’t work when I started it via the script, but when I used the launcher, it did just fine. The error that appeared was the game telling me that a patch was available, but actually there wasn’t.

After some research (and just opening my eyes ;)) I discovered that the region is set to Europe as a default and “public test”, which would be the region of choice, was not available. So the PTR client tried to connect to the Europe realm, which of course does not match the client version. So the server tells me “hey, you gotta patch if you wanna connect to me!” and the client just goes like “okay :(“…

What to do? The solution is simple, as I found out after looking in the logs of the launcher: Another command line parameter has to be applied, namely “OnlineService.PTR=true”, making the final launch script look like this:
#!/bin/bash cd ~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/Diablo3_PTR/drive_c/Program\ Files/Diablo\ III\ Public\ Test export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/Diablo3_PTR setarch i386 -3 ~/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-amd64/1.5.5-DiabloIII_v3/bin/wine "Diablo III.exe" OnlineService.PTR=true -launch & pid=$! taskset -cp 1 $pid 1> log1.log 2> log2.log && fg

So now it’s gonna work fine, at least as soon as the PTR is back up :)

Faenza style icon for PS3 Media Server

(Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus No Responses »

Sep 092011

Whoever uses PS3 media server with the Faenza icon set (or even the default Ubuntu icons) and the default color scheme with the dark top panel might have been upset because of the ugly ps3 media server icon. Not only didn’t the green color fit to the rest of the icons, but also the transparent background of the (png-based) icon didn’t work. The latter seems to be a Java restriction as it also happens with e.g. JDownloader.

Long story short, I decided to create a quick fix for this by modifying the icon myself. This version is just for the default 24px panel, as the automatic downscaling resulted in ugly, aliased edges, so I had to downscale it to the correct size for my panel.

This is what it looks like now (PMS is the leftmost icon):

To use this, just download the icon and place it in /resources/images in your pms.jar (to be found in your installation directory):

modified sk98lin version working with Linux kernel 2.6.35

Nerdismus 13 Responses »

Oct 172010

As it seems there are several people with issues concerning their Marvell Ethernet device, seemingly only affecting part number 88E8053 (e.g. to be found on Asus P5W DH Deluxe). This means that with the stock kernel driver (the sky2 module) there is the possibility of crashes appearing once in a while. These are caused by high network traffic, e.g. when you transfer huge files between several computers.

As problems like this never existed with the sk98lin driver, I always used it instead of the driver coming with the kernel. So far, Marvell did a good job in maintaining the driver for current kernel versions, but a version compiling against kernel 2.6.35 is yet to appear.

The reason why it does not compile is that there have been changes to netdevice.h in 2.6.35, so skge.c in the driver package’s source archive has to be modified. I tried to make the necessary changes and it seems like I had success, as I have just compiled the module for my kernel 2.6.35. You can download the modified version here. README_THIS_VERSION is contained in the archive and tells you more about the changes I made.

Bioshock Infinite

(Killer-?)Spiele, (Taschen-?)Rechner No Responses »

Aug 132010

Just yesterday I talked about a possible Bioshock sequel with a friend. And now? Today the according trailer has been revealed :D

And let me tell you: Bioshock Infinite is definitely something different…though it seems to be a prequel rather than a sequel. Well..this is trendy these days ;)

But watch the trailer and see it yourself :)

(via Nerdcore)

New Theme

Nerdismus, this, Web 0.2b No Responses »

Aug 122010

Updated the theme from yadda, which was reaaaaaaaaaally old, to suffusion which has really nice configuration possibilities. And finally, I also have a widget capable theme (yeah, I know that this is not really bleeding edge anymore ;))

Fix for Automatic WordPress Upgrade Issue

(Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus, Web 0.2b No Responses »

Aug 122010

As i had that problem for quite some time and had no idea what the cause for it could be, here is a fix for the "installation failed" (no further information given) error caused by the automatic upgrade procedure: http://www.geekonthepc.com/2009/08/06/wordpress-automatic-upgrades-woes-installation-failed/

Be aware that other than said in the linked post, the file has to be put in wp-admin/includes, not wp-includes. Worked like a charm for me :)

Sony, srsly?

(Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus 4 Responses »

Aug 062010

This is the way Sony applied thermal paste to the processors in my PS3 Slim:

Seriously? :S

FYI: mkv2vob on Linux (Converting Videos for Playstation 3)

(Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus No Responses »

Jul 302010

Just ran into that when searching for a tool to easily convert mkv files that were not correctly streamed (or especially copied, as for some reason there was a difference between just playing and copying it) by the PS3 Media Server. Fortunately, as it turns out, the popular tool mkv2vob works just flawlessly under wine. This automatically takes the right choice when it comes to the decision between just remuxing the media or doing a reencode. This saves the following:

Lots of time, because it also supports batch converting.
Lots of nerves. Trust me.

So go, get it, it won’t get easier :)

Brenner-Tuning

(Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus 2 Responses »

Jun 162010

Ohne Worte.

Morphological Antialiasing in God of War III

(Killer-?)Spiele, (Taschen-?)Rechner, Nerdismus, Web 0.2b 1 Response »

Apr 012010

Naty Hoffman reports in a blog post on Realtimerendering.com that God of War III is using Morphological Antialiasing. What I found interesting about this post, is that it is said that there were reportedly bad artifacts in moving images (though there are not in GOW3). As I used the method originally described by Reshetov without changes myself in a project (for a real time ray tracer) and didn’t see any artifacts there, I would be interested if it’s just a similar method which produced the artifacts or maybe even a stochastic component – who knows, people have ideas, and for still images there would be no problems :) So if you know anything about that, I’d be thankful if you left a comment.

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