I like really the playing the Need for Speed series in Windows, especially the older versions (4, 5 & 6).
I was wondering if there were any decent driving games that ran natively in Linux? Or even any bad driving games that ran natively in Linux.
I tried for many hours to get Need for Speed 4 (High Stakes) to run using WINE and some OpenGL wrapper program. I got the game to install, but the game would never start for me.
There are some really old versions of the game (Need for Speed 1, 2, & 3) that I would think WINE would have no trouble running because they are about 10 years old and have relatively primitive graphics. Has anyone got any of these games to run in WINE?
Trackmania Nations Forever seems to run nicely in wine.
There’s also another free clone of a Trackmania game in the repos, and there’s always Racer.
I tried Racer, the latest version in Windows. As far as I can see, it only has one car and one track. I played Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 afterward, and it NFS literally blew the doors, all the windows, the hood and the trunk off right Racer.
Do you know which repo in which I can find the Trackmania clone?
TORCS by far is the best. The cars may not be 100% true to their real life counter parts but considering its free and open source, it is really good. Plus it is entirely modable so if there is something you don’t like, change it! It has a very good base engine to do that sort of thing. It is also incredibly stable. Vdrift isn’t bad either but not as good as TORCS.
I tried TORCS, and it seemed very good, but one annoying thing I found was the inability to switch to an in-car view. You’re stuck with a view from above, looking down on the roof of your own car.
FWIW though, I just tried the latest version of WINE, which was released yesterday, and Need For Speed II and III run using this version of WINE (version 1.1.7-1.1.i586).
Sound and joystick control both work, and I was able to get a resolution of 1024 x 768 in 16 bit color (in NFS III). I think the graphics settings need some tweaking so I can use anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, but both games are definitely playable.
But all in all, I’m thrilled that these games will even start in WINE, let alone run.
If anyone else is able to tweak settings and get better performance out of these games, please share what you did. Or if you are able to get other driving games to run in WINE please let me know.