Sunday, February 10, 2008 2:52:25 PM
fifa, nhl, games, Linux
...
I've just installed my good old and beloved FIFA 98 on my linux and it runs great. Rendering is fast and smooth, sound is rich and I am having fun. I haven't played this game for like ... 8 years. Wow, that's a long time. Still it's one of my favourite games.
My machine:
base: AMD Athlon 2500+, 512M RAM
graphics: ATI Radeon @ 128M memory (RV350 chip), using fglrx driver
system: Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna, XFCE edition
Howto:
- I will assume you have Debian, Ubuntu, Mint or something like that
- Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main
- update packages database:
sudo apt-get update
- install wine:
sudo apt-get install wine
- run winecfg
- In tab Applications change windows version to Windows 98
- In tab Drives click Autodetect to make sure you have them all found.
- In tab Graphics enable virtual desktop emulation and set it to something nice (I use 1024x768)
- Now you should be able to install the game using the installer on the CD:
SETUP/ENGLISH/SETUP.EXE
from the CD
- The game installs in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/EA SPORTS/FIFA RTWC 98 by default and you can run it by clicking on fifartwc.exe or by command:
wine fifartwc.exe
YOU MUST CD TO THE GAME DIRECTORY TO RUN IT!
Troubleshooting:I can't select virtual desktop emulation. It's greyed out!Don't use wine from the default system repository. Use the one I recommend here.
Have fun
P.S. Some other games like NHL 99 or Pharaoh by Sierra work too.
Thursday, May 25, 2006 8:45:02 AM
interface design, patterns
There's a big rush around design patterns these days. Something you really shouldn't miss.
Yahoo! rocks and does a great job in this area. They have a
Design Pattern Library which is the best web UI textbook I've ever seen. They also released an open-source
Javascript library to do the tricks.
Don't forget to check their
UI blog at yuiblog.com. I think their
design patterns conversation will be really interesting, because all my heroes are involved.
But Yahoo is not the only one who talks about design patterns. There was a
Czech SIGCHI meeting in Prague. It took place last thursday (2006-05-18) and many great people were there. First there was a lecture about patterns and then we went to a restaurant and talked (not only) about it till late night.
It was great and I'm so glad the Czech SIGCHI lives!
Note: Next Czech SIGCHI meeting will be soon! Keep an eye on the site!
Friday, May 19, 2006 9:51:23 PM
interface design, help
Today I was designing interface for help. This is very hard. Harder than other parts of the interface. If you imagine how help works you'll know why.
Help has to navigate you quickly to the information you need and it has to tell you what you need to know in a way you can understand.
Unfortunately, the one who writes help has no idea what do you need to know at the moment and how advanced user you are. This usually means how well do you understand the structure of that software and how many technical terms you know.
You open the help when something doesn't work. You're annoyed, confused and stressed. In a situation like this people don't behave as they normally do. They don't act logically enough. Yes, because of stress.
Because of this help interface has special requirements:
- It has to be extremely well structured. The less steps you have to make to find the answer the better.
- You shouldn't put the same question/answer in two categories. One question - one answer - one place in the structure.
- Structure of the help should match with the structure of the application. Providing breadcrumbs navigation is a good idea.
- You have to be able to find the answer no matter what your logic is.
- It needs lightweight layout which is easy to understand.
- Visual design has to make you feel good. It has to wash your stress away.
Explanations:
- With every click you make, findability of the answer lowers. Nobody wants to dig deep. On the other hand, deep structure lets you navigate precisely to the place you need.
- Putting one answer to more catogories increases findability but confuses the user: "Is it the same answer, or not?" Using tags doesn't solve it. It just makes this situation different.
- This will help users to find the answer in an easier way.
- Link simmilar (relative) questions. Phrases like "you might need" or "did you mean" are good. But put them always under the answer, never above or to the side. People first look at the answer and if it's not what they are looking for, they will look somwhere else. They also should look less important than the answer.
- Use simple navigation, remove things like login field etc. Don't force users to give you much information about the problem. Using wizards doesn't always do the trick. "Don't ask, listen." That means: Try to get as much information from the things the user is doing.
- Perfect colours are green and blue. They represent nature, peace and harmony. Avoid using red, orange and yellow. These colours represent speed, aggressiveness and alerts. Use roundy shapes instead of sharp corners.
Hope this will help you
P.S. Definitely it's a very bad idea to mix visual and functional design issues in one article like I did here.
Thursday, May 11, 2006 5:12:50 PM
social networking, FOAF, XFN
FOAF is nice and I already
wrote about it. We'd like to implement something like this in the system we're developing. Today I was looking for some alternatives to it because I want to be sure it is the best
One of them is really nice. It's called
XFN which stands for XHTML Friends Network. It makes a social network using normal hyperlinks. It's a microformat, so it fits nicely in your website. It's simple like this:
<a href="http://jeff.example.org" rel="friend met">My friend Jeff</a>
This means that jeff.example.org is a website (blog) of your friend and that you know him personally - you met him. Isn't it cute?
There are many more words you can use to describe the relationship.
I'm gonna add this to my site right now and force all of my friends to do it too! We're gonna have a "social network"
XFN links:
http://gmpg.org/xfn/11 - profile, keywords
XFN in WikipediaBTW there is a
widget - FOAF viewer.
Thursday, May 4, 2006 8:35:57 PM
Linux, hardware
Many people use computer just for browsing the internet and doing some office work. But they have some powerful machine on their table. Let's say - 512MB Ram, 3Ghz Pentium, 200GB hard-disk. What is that good for?
It's expensive, needs a lot of electricity and almost all of it's power is unused. For this kind of work you need no more than half of it. In fact, you can do a lot on 120Mhz Pentium with 32MB Ram and 2GB disk. Laughing?
Try this!
Damn Small LinuxDamn Small Linux NotAnd don't forget to check their small machines!
Sometimes I get an old computer for free, install DSL on it an give it to someone. Many people can't afford a new computer or they just don't want to buy an expensive one for their children. And you know the children love to explore the internet ;-)
Saturday, April 15, 2006 11:49:48 AM
web 2.0
People keep asking me this question all the time. So, here's the answer for all of you:
It's about people. They want to share things. They want to tell the others what they like, do, think... And they want to do things together.
People want to communicate and cooperate. Web 2.0 are technologies that make it easy. And when I say easy I really mean it!
It's pretty hard to explain the background when you're not a developer and have no idea about
AJAX,
Meshups and web developement in general.
But It's easy to show you some Web 2.0 apps and let you enjoy them. You'll understand what Web 2.0 is once you taste it. In fact, normal people don't need to know what's in the background.
So, here are the links:
http://odeo.com - My favourite podcast service. Podcasting is something like "radio on demand". Everyone can have his / her own channel, everyone can listen to any episode, any time. You never miss the show!
Web 2.0 Show,
Inside the Net - Podcast channels about Web 2.0.
Google's hompage - Web search, news, games ... Make your own Google. Don't miss that nice drag&drop!
http://del.icio.us/ - Save here what you like and share it with others. It's delicious and very popular
Writeboard - An electronic paper which remembers who wrote what.
Flock - Browser which has many web 2.0 services built in.
And many others... Feel free to add links to comments.
Do you like Web 2.0?
Thursday, April 6, 2006 12:25:50 PM
web 2.0, webdesign, themes
A couple week ago
I wrote here that we're starting a new project. It's a themes specification for web applications. A lot of work has been done and now the first version of the SPEC IS READY!
Check it out at
http://themes.desineo.com!
Special thanks to
Cornelius who helped me a lot.
Tuesday, April 4, 2006 8:24:19 PM
webdesign
My website has received a prestigious award. It's icon is now on
http://prestige.wordstudio.cz which is an icon cloud of 1000 well designed sites. My icons is the second one and the author put it there just because he wanted to. I did not subscribe my site.
I appreciate this a lot. Jirka (the author of Prestige) is a very good webdesigner and because of this it's twice more valuable for me. Díky Jirko!
P.S. "Díky" means "thank you" in czech.
Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:59:08 PM
webdesign
Yesterday we have started making "web applications theme specification" and we call it "Tango for web".
Modern web applications (web 2.0) very often act and look like the desktop ones. There are even whole suites of them (just like on desktop). Because of this it would be good to unite the way of their appearance.
Desktop applications (like those in KDE or Gnome) already do this for quite a long time. But there’s nothing like this on the web.
We will try to define themes (theming system) that could be used across web apps. So, you will be able to use the same "skin" for your blog, homesite or whatever with very little or no modification.
Our project is based on
Tango,
freedesktop.org specifications and our praxis.
Everyone (yes, you too) is welcome to join us! It's an open project. If you'd like to cooperate or get more info, please leave me a comment under this article.
My Opera
