SOLDIER OF FORTUNE ON MODERN LINUX
Somewhere around 2000, Loki Games [https://www.lokigames.com/] released the
native Linux version. I bought the CD back then. I still enjoy this game, so
I've invested some time getting it working on modern systems. I've identified
the following issues with getting SoF working, read on for solutions. NOTE: This
is for the original native Linux version. NOT the Windows version in
Wine/Windows.

1. Installer does not run
2. Game is 32 bit
3. Game crash on start
4. No sound
5. Game does not support desired resolution

The list of problems is not as short as we'd like, but fortunately, there are
easy fixes for all of them,

1. INSTALLER DOES NOT RUN
No problem! Installers are for the weak!
Mount your CD (or, if you're somewhat sane, you ripped your CD so you have the
ISO on hand. Create a destination directory, and copy the files.


sudo mount -o loop SoF.iso /mnt
mkdir $HOME/sof
cd /mnt
tar -xf paks.tar.gz -C $HOME/sof/
tar -xf binaries.tar.gz -C $HOME/sof/
cp bin/x86/glibc-2.1/sof $HOME/sof/


Done! That's the installation taken care of, but it probably won't run quite
yet!

2. GAME IS 32 BIT
Soldier of Fortune is a 32 bit game, that means it was compiled for 32 bit
machines, and linked to 32 bit libraries. So if you are running 64 bit Linux,
you may need to install a few 32 bit libaries, luckily, modern Linux
distributions (still) have elegant support for this.

Before installing additional packages, try running ./sof and see what happens.
If it complains, something like 'error while loading shared libraries' then no
worries, you'll just need to identify which libraries to install, they are all
available!

I went ahead and resolved the most likely dependencies, so start by installing
the 32 bit versions of those packages, note that I'm also including the version,
not because that exact version is required, but because I know it works at least
with that version.


ii libc6:i386 2.27-3ubuntu1 i386 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libx11-6:i386 2:1.6.4-3 i386 X11 client-side library
ii libxext6:i386 2:1.3.3-1 i386 X11 miscellaneous extension library
ii libxcb1:i386 1.13-1 i386 X C Binding
ii libxau6:i386 1:1.0.8-1 i386 X11 authorisation library
ii libxdmcp6:i386 1:1.1.2-3 i386 X11 Display Manager Control Protocol library
ii libbsd0:i386 0.8.7-1 i386 utility functions from BSD systems - shared library


There may be others, but I didn't find them, give it a try, I'm sure you'll get
it working even if I missed a few. Here is a list of all 32bit libs on my system
[32bitlibs.txt], you certainly won't need all of those.. But just in case. Also,
here is the linkage info from ldd [sof-links.txt] for the binaries, note those
"not found" are just local files, that's no problem.

3. GAME CRASH ON START
If running ./sof greets you with the "Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL
Parachute Deployed)" then there is both a simple reason and solution. Here is
the full output from a crash:sof-crashlog.txt [sof-crashlog.txt]. What happens
is simple: The ref_gl.so library wants to write a nice list of OpenGL
extentions. In order to do so, it sets aside a rather large (for the time)
buffer, of 8192 bytes, for writing a text-string. It then passes this buffer,
along with the format string "GL_EXTENSIONS: %s\n" and a buffer containing all
the extensions, to vsprintf. vsprintf then writes the string.. But.. What
happens if the buffer with the extensions happen to be longer than the allocated
8192 bytes? Nothing good. The program will (in best cases) crash after
overwriting instruction memory with text data.

There are several ways to fix this, the most simple, being to never let vsprintf
write to the buffer. See, it's actually a message console, it's never used for
anything in the program! How lucky we are, that the only critical of these bugs
seem to be in the printing of a console log message!

THE EASY FIX!
The file responsible for this behaviour is ref_gl.so, I don't have the source
code for this file, and I don't know if it is considered a part of SoF, but I
assume it is. Therefore, I will not be able to provide a fixed file for
download, but I am able to instruct you how to fix it yourself. This fix is
rather crude, so, take a backup of the file first!

Open the ref_gl.so file in bless, or another hex-editor. These instructions are
for bless. Press ctrl+f and type GL_EXTENSIONS, change type from HEX to String,
press "Find Next". Now, replace the % with a space. That is, make sure you put
another characther, for example, a space, at its place. There are two strings,
so, press "Find Next" again, and repeat the process, then save the file. If in
doubt, see the video I recorded [patching-ref_gl.so.flv] (flv format, 2.7 MiB).

4. NO SOUND
NOTE:I've seen it crash when using the padsp script, if it crashes after showing
video AND a short amount of audio, then don't use padsp.. I'm investigating a
fix..

If you're using pulseaudio, you may have trouble getting sound to work, the
pulseaudio-utils:i386 package contains a script called padsp, which you can
source to make audio work. So go ahead and install that if required. The
resolution-hack detailed below also mentions how to modify the "sof" script to
include the audio fix.

5. GAME DOES NOT SUPPORT DESIRED DRESOLUTION
I made a small hack to allow you to play SoF in any resolution you want (The
famous SoF Resolution Hack).

It works by preloading a bit of code that will plug a different resolution into
the memory structure that the game engine uses to set the OpenGL display
resolution.

screenshot [sof01t.jpg] [sof01.jpg]DOWNLOAD
Binary and source: SofResolutionHack.tar.gz [SofResolutionHack.tar.gz] 4264
Bytes,(SHA256:3cf017a729842b0d1c9e765154318f151f3210c2f34b113112e5b3999d56f527)

NOTE: Since the instructions above does not generate a config file, step 1 can
be skipped, as far as I can tell, the default mode is 3, so I've made the hook
active on that mode as well as mode 9.

README.TXT

Using this hack is very easy. 3 steps.
- If you don't use pulseaudio, remove the . padsp line mentioned below.
- If you want another resolution, simply replace 2560 and 1440 with the width and height you want.

* 0. Copy ResHook.so into your sof directory so it is next to the sof and sof-bin files.
* 1. Open ~/.loki/sof/config.cfg and set gl_mode "9" ( or 3, the default mode)
* 2. Open the sof file inside the sof directory with an editor, go to the end of the file and replace:

 if [ -x "${SOF_DATA_PATH}/sof-bin" ]; then
         ${SOF_DATA_PATH}/sof-bin $*
 fi

* With:

export SOF_WIDTH=2560
export SOF_HEIGHT=1440
padsp
export LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD $SOF_DATA_PATH/ResHook.so"

if [ -x "${SOF_DATA_PATH}/sof-bin" ]; then
       ${SOF_DATA_PATH}/sof-bin $*
fi


**** NOTES FOR 64 bit systems!
To build the hook you need to install libc6-dev-i386



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last edited: 2016-06-19 - No need for a disclaimer, I've done nothing wrong!

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