... Tomb Raider 2?

[eae]

Is Tomb Raider 2 playable on Linux? Somewhere I read that it was used as a demonstration for wine so it should work, elsewhere I read it doesn't work even on cedega. Also, are there free Tomb Raider-like engines capable of running the game?

[Sprotte]

Like many games, I can install it without problems. But when I start tomb2.exe I get a Microsoft C++ Runtime library error (abnormal termination) and the program crashes.

I researched a bit, and found that the CD is "SafeDisc" protected. Wine doesn´t support that yet.

So I got myself a no-CD cracked .exe and followed some instructions from the net. Sadly, I still get the same error.

However, my current wine install doesn´t even want to run Baldur´s Gate, which definitely worked to my satisfaction earlier (before anyone asks, the five-CD version). So my wine install is probably messed up.

First make sure your wine install is OK (delete .wine directory and create a new one) . Try "wine notepad" or winefile. Then I´d try a no-CD crack again (and copy the data and fmv dirs from the CD to your Core directory). Also try different settings in your .wine/config (as far as "managed", "desktop", "windows version" etc. options go).

Wine is finicky, especially when you want to run several games with the same install. As soon as you tune your config for one game, others crash.

TR 2 is one of the best games ever. It would be great to have it working, but copy-protection is probably the issue (and wine devs being more interested in newer games and thus newer copy protection methods). So to my knowledge, a no-cd crack is a must. It makes the game executable look for the data on the hard disk instead of the CD. But you still need the original game data (the CD is cheap).

Those patches can be found on the net (either patches in exe format or complete modified exes that go in the place of the original "gameXX.exe"). To my knowledge, you must own the original CD to legally use such a crack.

Luckily, there are native versions of Quake et al. and Baldur´s Gate definitely runs in wine. So the friends of classic games (who don´t need the latest whiz-bang) are not totally left in the cold. :-/

The last option, if you have a fast machine, is a Playstation emulator and the PSX version of the game. But wine would be preferrable, of course.

And yes, there is an open source project that tries to port/imitate the TR engine (don´t know which one). Do a google search. Open Raider?

If I get it working, I´ll post.