Enemy Territory

There are some pretty good games available for Linux. One I like in particular is 'Enemy Territory', a standalone variation of "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". Enemy Territory is available as a free download from a number of locations such as this one.

Sound Issues

Enemy territory works pretty well for me, except with respect to my sound chip. My sound chip is a Via VT8233, and when I start enemy territory from a terminal I get no sound, and on the terminal I see the message :-

------- sound initialization -------
/dev/dsp: Input/output error
Could not mmap /dev/dsp
------------------------------------

The solution

The fix is pretty easy. Simply run as root the command

echo "et.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

prior to starting et.

So you do not have to remember to run the command every time you want to play Enemy territory put the command before the last line in the file /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99local and it will be automatically executed at the end of the boot process.

If you are using a distribution other than Mandrake and that file does not exist, then put the command in /etc/rc.local

Wednesday 23rd March 2005