14 replies to this topic

[connor.clark]

You can find the flatpak on Flathub: com.zquestclassic.ZQuest, or via your Linux distro's Software repository (assuming you've configured Flathub as a software source). This will not track nightly releases, we will only update it for alpha releases.

 

Note that Linux users are currently required to provide their own MIDI synthesizer for MIDI to work. See this thread.

 

A user on Discord (Ken) has used this to get ZC on their Steam Deck. That discussion is linked here (requires access to the Developer Discord), and is summarized here:

 

Sure - it's actually not that complicated, I just ran the two lines under "Manual Install" through Konsole on the deck.

After that, it exists as an application on the Deck's desktop mode, which you can turn into a non-steam application by right click/context menu.

It's a shame it won't run directly through the Discover app on the deck, but this is only a couple steps removed from that.

The only other thing I had to tweak was getting it to recognize the D-Pad on the deck - which I didn't actually do, I just set it to behave like a joystick, because the joystick works out of the box.

The other thing is EX 3/4 - I currently have those set on the left and right thumbstick clicks, respectively, I wanted to get them set up on the shoulder triggers, but for some reason they don't get picked up as valid inputs during control configuration, possibly because it's having trouble distinguishing between a partial and full axis on those. It may also be possible to set up on the extra buttons on the back of the steam deck, but I don't use those all that often.

 

 

 

Also, if someone would like to curate a set of photos that show off the editor/some quests, it would be appreciated. Here are the screenshot guidelines https://docs.flathub...nes#screenshots. I think we'd be fine to use some pre-existing photos laying around from SOTW/Y (or whatever). We should have no more than 10, and we need a few of the editor too.

[Hergiswi]

wow, this is huge! i haven't tried to install zc on linux in a long time, but i'd imagine this is way easier (and more standardized) than whatever other method was available. thanks for doing this!

[Useless Old Man Wisdom]

wow, this is huge! i haven't tried to install zc on linux in a long time, but i'd imagine this is way easier (and more standardized) than whatever other method was available. thanks for doing this!

The hardest part was getting midis to play in ZC player, but as per my thread linked in the OP, it's actually not that difficult at all. Otherwise, all I had to do was unpack the tarball to a directory and the ZC player executable just works and can be configured via the ZC launcher.

[connor.clark]

The only way it will "just work" is via flatpak. If it just worked via unzipping the archive found in GitHub, it's only because you just happened to have all the correct libraries already installed on your system. I've already seen that not being the case, even for Ubuntu, for some people.

In your other post you mentioned something about CPU problems. This should have been resolved in the more recent versions than the alpha you mentioned using. I believe the current flatpak version has it fixed.

[Kacy]

Sorry for bothering you folks, I wish I could just delete this. I decided to check with updats and grabbed the nightly. It appears to be working now. Thank you for your time. Going back behind the scenes now.

 

Edit: I stand corrected. I get a window called "can't open saved fame file. Where is that file suppose to be. And eos anyone know how to fix it?

 

It's not creating a save file in the saves folder

Edited by Kacy, 24 September 2023 - 09:25 PM.

[connor.clark]

BTW for the flatpak, alpha 118 - I just found that it won't launch the Player/Editor from the launcher. But -- if you click on the "Update" tab in the launcher first, and download the latest nightly - it will launch then.

 

> It's not creating a save file in the saves folder

 

Confirmed this is a bug, will look into it. There is a workaround. It only happens when launching the player from ZLauncher. If you navigate to `~/.var/app/com.zquestclassic.ZQuest/data/ZQuest Classic` directly, and run `zplayer`, it won't happen.

[connor.clark]

The latest version of Flathub (nightly-2023-09-26-2) should have all these issues fixed now.

[Kacy]

Thank you. I tried to do that and it said it was broken. Even as long as I've run Linux, I really don't know much about how to do things on it. I tried what you said and it said it was broken. So I removed zquest from the software manager and deleted the folder in .var. I downloaded the flatpak again, will do a reboot and try again. Thank you for everything.

 

Edit: Things seem to be working fine. Thank you Conner. I do my best work behind the scenes.

Edited by Kacy, 27 September 2023 - 01:29 PM.

[Useless Old Man Wisdom]

The only way it will "just work" is via flatpak. If it just worked via unzipping the archive found in GitHub, it's only because you just happened to have all the correct libraries already installed on your system. I've already seen that not being the case, even for Ubuntu, for some people.

In your other post you mentioned something about CPU problems. This should have been resolved in the more recent versions than the alpha you mentioned using. I believe the current flatpak version has it fixed.

You're right, I forget about how you developer types take terms like "just works" a lot more literally than the rest of us. I should have said something else.

 

I see that there's a flatpak available now, but am opting not to use it, because the software manager says it requires almost 900MB to download and 2.9GB of installed space. That's even more dependents needed than when I tried Wine.

 

I also recently tried the alpha 119 release (the archive, not flatpak), but just couldn't get my old ZC.sav file to load or be recognized. To make matters worse, the new save files feature just wouldn't work (there I go again with that term) at all with quests that have scripted in-quest saving only (like a Tribute to Yeto's Quest). I'm going to stick with alpha 116 for a while until the save files feature gets ironed out.

[connor.clark]

Please send me that save file and a quest to try to load with it.

[connor.clark]

I tried loading a A116 save into A119 on Ubuntu (archive, not the flatpak), and it worked as expected: individual save files are put in a folder called "saves" and the old one is moved to "saves/backups". I'll need more information to help debug your issue: was there anything of note in the allegro.log output? You should see "write save: ..." when it saves - the allegro log may totally drown out any useful information because of a stupid noisy sound logger but you will easily see "write save:" from the stdout if you start it in a terminal.

 

Additionally, Yeto's Quest created a save file just fine for me on Ubuntu.

 

Does it work from the flatpak? Perhaps theres a permissions error, or something atypical with your linux system. What distribution is it?

 

I see that there's a flatpak available now, but am opting not to use it, because the software manager says it requires almost 900MB to download and 2.9GB of installed space. That's even more dependents needed than when I tried Wine.

Flathub shows ~30 / 70 MB for the flatpak. My software manager on Ubuntu says the same, and I confirmed the size is ~70 MB on disk. Can you share a screenshot?

[Useless Old Man Wisdom]

I'll be happy to send a copy of my zc.sav. What's your email?

 

I tried experimenting with a119 again, and it appears that in addition to my old zc.sav not being loaded and converted into individual saves, none of the quests I experimented with formed individual save files either. I tried a variety of quests with scripted in-quest saving and quests that use the traditional F6>save option for saving. When I start a119 for the first time, with the zc.sav file there in the base directory, the "select" screen is totally blank, and the zc.sav file seems to be sent straight to the saves/backup folder. I wouldn't be surprised if my zc.sav file is corrupted in some way, as the file itself is a legacy from many, many years ago, originally formed on a windows 7 machine running ZC 1.92 probably. I have had issues with this zc.sav file getting corrupt before and causing some extreme weirdness with individual quests, but the wierdness resolved when I deleted the save for the individual quest on the select screen. I could just ditch the saves in my old zc.sav and start over, but like I said, a119 doesn't seem to be forming new individual save files.

 

In allegro.log, I see an interesting hint:

Error saving: Invalid cross-device link
write save: saves/2023-11-05-Project-Storm-ProStorm.sav

In this case, I was trying a different quest, Project Storm, which uses a scripted in-quest saving option just like a Tribute to Yeto's Quest. I don't see any hints in the log about why a119 doesn't load my zc.sav. The folder that a119 is in has read and write permissions, just like my a116 folder, but not root permissions (though I don't see why the a119 would need root permissions - just saying). Write now, the distro in question that I am using is Mint 22.2. I have Ubuntu 20.x on a different PC, but I usually use the Mint one to play ZC.

 

Here's a screenshot of Zquest Classic from my software manager. I'm probably missing some sort of flatpak-related dependents, as I haven't had the need to install any other flatpak programs:

 

 

Edited by Useless Old Man Wisdom, 05 November 2023 - 12:41 PM.

[connor.clark]

" Error saving: Invalid cross-device link " gives me enough information. That's what happens when attempting to move a file from one disk interface to another. The short of it is we create a temporary file, write data to it, then move it to the final location to prevent corrupting something if a crash happens in the middle of all that. But on Linux temporary files are often on a separate "tmpfs" thing which means it can't be moved... I had worked around this a number of different ways but I will probably solve this by just writing our temporary files to "<final destination>.tmp", which is guaranteed to be on the same disk interface as the final file destination.

 

 

 

In the meantime, I _think_ you can get A119 to work if you start it like this: `container=flatpak ./zplayer`. This won't do anything with flatpak, it's just setting an environment variable which ZC checks for to behave differently when making temporary files.

 

As for the software manager size listing, yeah I suspect that includes the first time setup of flatpak.

[Kacy]

Apparently it updated itself to version 2.55-alpha-120 and now it isn't even load the main window to load the game window. Now can I load it from menu either. I give up and am going back to 2.50.. Thanks anyways folks.

[connor.clark]

I have found and fixed the issue causing that. It should be updated through flathub in the next few hours.