Running decade-old games in containers

#1

Post by mbrukman » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

Running decade-old games in containers
misha.brukman.net

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#2

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

I'd really love to see a similar approach but applied to games much older, like the ones you have to pull out a DOSBOX to play, or a Win95 virtual machine. The Win95 games are going to be much more difficult to set up because the VM needs a bunch of stuffs to work properly (sound, video) while the DOSBOX does everything for you.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#3

Post by tuco86 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

i managed to run diablo2 (release 2000) on wine in a docker container. with ffmepg streaming it as a video. Was a real eye opener moment to realize what can fit in these things.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#4

Post by zokier » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

I'm bit befuddled why the author decided to use volumes for /source and /install instead of just installing the game into the container image. That way you wouldn't need to keep the game files floating around on the host system and overall would have more self-contained container. You could even get fancy and use multi-stage container so that the installer wouldn't need to be included in the final image.

The installer could be run under `expect` so that human interaction is not needed.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#5

Post by zokier » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

tuco86 wrote: post #3

i managed to run diablo2 (release 2000) on wine in a docker container. with ffmepg streaming it as a video. Was a real eye opener moment to realize what can fit in these things.

Why would you need docker for wine?

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#6

Post by tuco86 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #5

tuco86 wrote: post #3

i managed to run diablo2 (release 2000) on wine in a docker container. with ffmepg streaming it as a video. Was a real eye opener moment to realize what can fit in these things.

Why would you need docker for wine?

i was curious if i could run diablo2 on my kubernetes clusters.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#7

Post by rgovostes » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

tuco86 wrote: post #3

i managed to run diablo2 (release 2000) on wine in a docker container. with ffmepg streaming it as a video. Was a real eye opener moment to realize what can fit in these things.

Could you elaborate on how you got ffmpeg to stream the output? Was it rendering to a virtual display?

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#8

Post by jwhitlark » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

tuco86 wrote: post #6

zokier wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need docker for wine?

i was curious if i could run diablo2 on my kubernetes clusters.

That sounds lovely! Was it playable? I'd love to take a look at the manifests, if you could make them available somewhere.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#9

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

I've been trying to get Obsidian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_(1997_video_game)) to run under emulation, but so far it's been too choppy to be playable.

Re: Running decade-old games in containers

#10

Post by butz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

Machinarium and Botanicula on Steam doesn't provide native Linux versions, but at least both games have "Platinum" support on Proton. Found a native Linux copy of Machinarium from HumbleBundle. To get it running on Fedora 31 I had only to install single missing dependency: `sudo yum install libXt.i686`

Well, now I'll probably have to beat the game, while I'm at it.