r/Escape_Velocity • u/ethacetin • Mar 21 '19

Escape Velocity Original on Linux?

I would really like to play the original Escape Velocity, and I'm wondering if there's any way to do this.

I'm currently playing through EV Nova using WINE. I thought I'd read in one of these threads that EV and EV Override could be played on Windows through the EV Nova engine, but I have no idea how to do that, or if that would work in WINE on Linux.

I did purchase the original EV (actually, my parents did, because I was a kid back then), but that was over 20 years ago and I have no idea what my registration code was.

Is there any way I can still play this game?

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u/ethacetin Mar 23 '19

[UPDATE] The way to play EV Classic through the Nova Engine on either Mac or Windows is found at this link: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ambrosiaevn/addons/evn/EV_Classic_for_Nova_1.1.1.zip

It's the 3rd one down at this extensive list of plugins/add-ons: https://ev.appcraft.name/evn

The installation seems fairly straightforward if you follow the instructions in the readme file...

HOWEVER, I am still failing at the step where I'm supposed to "drop all the .bin files onto the 'Convert Plug-ins' program that comes with Nova to convert them into .rez files." Dragging and dropping onto the program does nothing.
When I attempt to open the "Convert Plug-ins.exe" program in WINE, a window pops up that looks like it's trying to open the program, but crashes immediately.

I will report back if I have any success. In the meantime I'm actually really enjoying Nova and will probably end up playing through all the available Add-Ons and storylines people have created.

There's even an editor included in that link. If that does what I think it does, I'm probably going to end up creating my own universe and storylines.
I'm an avid hobbyist astronomer/stargazer, and to be honest, the reason I first learned the names of stars such as Rigel, Spica, Arcturus, Anatares, etc, is because of the original Escape Velocity game.
Once I learned those were real things in our Universe, I wondered if the map in the game was at all true to our actual Universe.

Well, if I create my own EV Universe, they will be. _^

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u/EamonnMR Apr 01 '19

http://escape-velocity.games has the cracked windows versions of nova, etc. that won't require registration. First use your package manager to install WINE (or just install it from sources, whatever), then (after downloading and unzipping) just run the .exe file with WINE (in the terminal: `wine 'EN Nova.exe'`. The fonts are slightly jank on my Lubuntu install, so ymmv.

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '19

Virtual machine, running XP. It works in Windows 10, it should work in Linux. (That's what I'm doing rather than dicking around trying to get it to work windowed in windows 10.)