FreeSO On Linux Natively

dotequals

dotequals

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UPDATE: If you have been using FreeSO on Linux prior to Update 70 (June 9th, 2018), you must redownload macextras.zip

In this thread Rhys mentions that the steps to getting FreeSO working on Mac may also work to get it running on Linux and this is in fact true and doesn't involve the unnecessary complexities of wine!
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On Linux the game looks for The Sims Online files to be in a folder named game and that folder must be inside your FreeSO folder. For example, /home/dotequals/FreeSO/game/TSOClient/TSOClient.exe should be the original TSO game executable.
Installation Instructions:
  • Install the following dependencies using terminal and your package manager
    • Install mono for Linux or go here: http://www.mono-project.com/download/#download-lin
      • On Arch the package is just mono
      • On Ubuntu it's mono-devel (in testing, the steps to add the mono repoistory were unnecessary)
    • Install SDL2
      • On Arch the package is just sdl2
      • On Ubuntu it's libsdl2-2.0-0
    • Install cabextract or go here: https://www.cabextract.org.uk/
    • Install rsync if `which rsync` (without quotes) returns nothing as it's needed during the client update process
  • Install FreeSO
  • Install The Sims Online
    • Download an archive of The Sims Online here: http://ia801903.us.archive.org/tarv...tar&file=042006/TSO_Installer_v1.1239.1.0.zip
    • Grab the latest release of TSO-Version-Patcher from here: https://github.com/riperiperi/TSO-Version-Patcher/releases
    • Extract both zips and keep track of where they’re stored on your computer (usually ~/Downloads/)
    • In a terminal window change directory to be inside the extracted TSO Installer folder (ex. cd ~/Downloads/TSO_Installer_v1.1239.1.0)
    • Execute: `cabextract -d /path/to/FreeSO/game Data1.cab` (without quotes and where /path/to/FreeSO is where you've downloaded and stored FreeSO) which will create a folder in your FreeSO folder called game
    • In the terminal window change directory to be inside the TSO-Version-Patcher Release folder (ex. cd ~/Downloads/Releases)
    • Execute: `mono TSOVersionPatcherF.exe 1239toNI.tsop /path/to/FreeSO/game` (without quotes and where /path/to/FreeSO is where you've downloaded and stored FreeSO)
  • Make freeso.command and freeso3d.command executable by changing directory to your FreeSO folder and typing chmod +x freeso.command (also do this for freeso3d.command if you want to play in 3D).
  • Run ./freeso.command or ./freeso3d.command from your FreeSO folder to start the game! (these run `mono FreeSO.exe` and handle game patches)
IMPORTANT: UPDATING
  • Updating FreeSO is more difficult. After the game's update finishes, the updater will not run. You must run freeso.command or freeso3d.command again, where you will see it performing the update in the command line.
  • Additionally, the game will not properly close until you close the terminal window hosting it. This is pretty unclean, but it works for now.
  • Check back at this thread or the Mac thread after updates just to check if this process has changed, or if you need new MacExtras.
Installed packages can vary widely from system to system so make sure to read the terminal output as you go through this process to check for errors.
Simitone:
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  • You will need to install mono and (likely) SDL2 from the above steps if you have not already done so.
  • Download and extract the latest ReleaseOGL from https://github.com/riperiperi/Simitone/releases
    • Because we aren't on Windows, ReleaseDX will not work. Don't download it.
  • You will need to obtain The Sims Complete Collection files from a Windows PC and place them within a set of sub-folders inside your Simitone folder. For example, /home/dotequals/Simitone/C:/Program Files (x86)/Maxis/The Sims/The Sims.exe should be the original The Sims executable.
    • If you're using the command line to make these folders, quotations or escapes are your friend.
  • From your Simitone folder, run "mono Simitone.Windows.exe" or "mono Simitone.Windows.exe -3d" without quotes and enjoy!
 
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Amazing! Just replaced my lutris copy. With a few touch-ups this could definitely mean FreeSO native packages for many distros.

Edit: I have noticed that I can't change which output device mono plays out of through pavucontrol.
 
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:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
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Thank you so much for this! :D
The instructions are really helpful instead of going off of the Mac instructions.
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Added instructions on how to get Simitone working to my original post. You will need Windows to obtain the TS1 game files.
 
Thanks for this - really helpful. Does TTS work? I couldn't get it to on my machine. Otherwise everything is great.
 
quimby said:
Thanks for this - really helpful. Does TTS work? I couldn't get it to on my machine. Otherwise everything is great.
Click to expand...
You may have to force TTS on to do all of the messages in chat, otherwise you (or other people) have to have it enabled in the launcher/config.ini file
 
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I believe the current implementation of TTS currently checks if the platform is Windows and then uses Windows specific system calls, so it’s unavailable for Linux and Mac.
 
System.Speech is not supported on mono, so TTS is not available on mac or linux.
 
I'm getting an error saying that there's additional unparseable characters at the end of the string. I'm not sure where I went wrong, can anyone help?
 
I usually get that error when I don't run it with sudo (super user - read: admin - privileges). Also, if it's updating from the old version, you will need to also run updater with mono after the client gets needed files.
 
Trying to run the updater reports that it must run the game to download the files... however, the game throws the error before it can download the files making the update procedure impossible.

Also I have tried using sudo and I'm getting the same thing.
 
You are running the freeso.command file, right? To run it, you don't run it with mono, but with "./" followed by the name of the file (in this case "freeso.command" or "freeso3d.command") with no space.
 
If I try to run freeso.command directly from the terminal I am told "command not found" (even if I have changed my directory and the file is listed by ls) however, if I set the permissions for the file to be executable then run it in a terminal that way the game comes up and I get the error. However your feedback did encourage me to try something.

From my home directory I used
Code: 
sudo ./Games/FreeSO/freeso.command
and I did get the game to come up... and immediately give me the same error as above.
 
I've added some clarification to the steps and included how to make the scripts executable since that was lacking. Thanks for that!

However, I haven't come across the FormatException error before. Did you use GetTSO.sh to download and extract The Sims Online files or were you able to copy them from a Windows computer?
 
I copied them from my windows install.

And yeah I forgot to add the ./ when running it from the folder because in my brain all terminals are DOS 6 and it is still 1999.
 
I just wanted to say that I solved my issue. I downloaded the game files with Fatbag's GetTSO.sh. So, the only thing I can assume is that my windows files had something funky happen to them (indexing? maybe the OS compressed it on the disk?)

Anyway the game is running and playable with low graphics but I knew I had a low-end machine to begin with so that's no surprise.
 
I'm glad that worked for you! Usually copying the files from a Windows machine locally works better than using the script, but it sounds like they got corrupted during the transfer or something.
 
UPDATE: If you have been using FreeSO on Linux prior to Update 70 (June 9th, 2018), you must redownload macextras.zip
 
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