Want to play the classic racer Need For Speed II SE on Linux? There's an open source engine for that

Awesome! One of the games of my childhood! I do love it! <3

PS: How well does the AI work? Does the game feel like the original game? It's not the Case with Caesarium.


Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 20 Jun 2016 at 7:03 pm UTC

I really love the effort that people can put to develop open source gaming engine recreation or emulators.
This really helps preserving video game history.

Oooh, I loved this game. I'm pretty sure it's not aged well. :-) I have the disc for it somewhere, I wonder if I can find it...

I can only find one copy available on Amazon priced at $50, which is frankly insane considering the age of it :/

EDIT: Wow, this is not trivial to compile on Ubuntu :/ Anyone know how to cleanly install libsdl1.2-dev:i386 ?


Last edited by Cybolic on 20 Jun 2016 at 7:32 pm UTC

Is the FZR2000 included? :D

I'll give it a try! My CD was lying directly behind my monitor on a big pile of discs, which were considered for the trashcan. I hope it is compatible with the Green Pepper version...

I may be mistaken, but as far as I know they disassembled the game binaries. That would make it a bit problematic in a legal sense.

EDIT: Wow, this is not trivial to compile on Ubuntu :/ Anyone know how to cleanly install libsdl1.2-dev:i386 ?

I'll try to create a 32bit VM. This should be much easier!

I had similar problems with the official mail client, which is used by our university. For Linux, there is only an old 32bit client available. I tried to install this on 64bit Ubuntu without success. I think the installation of 32bit Java was the biggest problem. On 32bit Ubuntu, it worked like a charm. Luckily, this client is only needed for setting up the automatic mail filters, while the main functionality can be reached from the extremely dumbed-down web interface.

This is one of the big reasons I moved away from Debian. Multi arch support is a pain. Your can force mutli arch support but it gives you a bunch of scary warnings. You can try to find 32 bit versions but the support is sparse. Fedora has great multiarch support, I run 32 execs and compile 32 source on my 64 bit machine quite frequently.

One thing you can do on Debian/Ubuntu, which I have done in the past, is create 32 chroot in your 64 bit system. You have to bind mount some dirs like /dev but it works really well, just wasteful as you have to maintain full installs of 64 bit and 32 bit at the same time.

This is awesome though, Ive been using dosbox for Need for Speed 1, with openglide for Tombraider and some other dos games. Now I can get Need for Speed 2 also.


Last edited by m2mg2 on 20 Jun 2016 at 8:11 pm UTC

The developer decompiled it and replaced all the legacy windowing and OS integration with something portable. A remarkable achievement. This is the reason why the game is fully implemented and only runs on 32-bit.

The developer decompiled it and replaced all the legacy windowing and OS integration with something portable. A remarkable achievement. This is the reason why the game is fully implemented and only runs on 32-bit.

I just looked at the code and that does indeed seem to be the case! It looks something like a miniature Wine-implementation based on SDL2, re-implementing just the calls that NFSIISE uses. I don't know about international law (or law in general, IANAL), but this doesn't look particularly legal.
It would be very nice if it could be the basis of an official port though!

The developer decompiled it and replaced all the legacy windowing and OS integration with something portable. A remarkable achievement. This is the reason why the game is fully implemented and only runs on 32-bit.

Is it allowed to decompile proprietary game?

Just compiled it on 64bit Fedora 22. Easiest compile from source I've done in a long time. Felt like it didn't even happen, I though it was like a custom configure script but when I went looking for the make file all I found was an executable.

Would be awesome if the publisher gave their permission, even throw some change at the person that did it and make it an official port. They could release on steam/GOG multiplatform and make a few bucks. Probably never happen though, it is too reasonable.

This is one of the big reasons I moved away from Debian. Multi arch support is a pain. Your can force mutli arch support but it gives you a bunch of scary warnings. You can try to find 32 bit versions but the support is sparse. Fedora has great multiarch support, I run 32 execs and compile 32 source on my 64 bit machine quite frequently.

One thing you can do on Debian/Ubuntu, which I have done in the past, is create 32 chroot in your 64 bit system. You have to bind mount some dirs like /dev but it works really well, just wasteful as you have to maintain full installs of 64 bit and 32 bit at the same time.

This is awesome though, Ive been using dosbox for Need for Speed 1, with openglide for Tombraider and some other dos games. Now I can get Need for Speed 2 also.

Exactly why I use pbuilder for making SteamOS packages like pcsx2. Though I. Ant agree about multiarch. I typically done hjave a problem. Most times, specifying package:i366 or package [i386] in Debian/control does the trick.

View video on youtube.com

How did you guys manage to start the game? I did compile, copy, lowercase the file names ... after launching the game it complains about missing MOVIEs!? I opened a bug report on Github.


PS: I wouldn't buy the game nowaydays. On the one hand it's EA (they are rich as ******) on the other hand the licences might be expired anyways. Just get it from the web. Psssst... I didn't say that. ;)

EDIT: Got the movie issue fixed. It was cause by wrong (non SE) game data. Still I get a black screen.


Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 21 Jun 2016 at 12:12 am UTC

PS: I wouldn't buy the game nowaydays. On the one hand it's EA (they are rich as ******) on the other hand the licences might be expired anyways. Just get it from the web. Psssst... I didn't say that. ;)

The copyright definitely hasn't expired, so getting it from the web would be plain old piracy. Good thing you "didn't say that", eh? Before anyone says "abandonware", I think that's a discussion for another venue.

GOG might be interested in adding the game to their catalogue though, seeing as they've got other classics of the genre like the Screamer games as well.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! THE BEST GAME EVER!

I struggled so much to get it working in WINE and it's my proudest achievement in the emulation sector! I love this!
I used to play it in split-screen with my father and my friends, it was so cool!
I can't wait to play it natively on my favourite OS!

And being open-source too... it just couldn't have been better! I'm so gonna study every bit of code when I have the time, maybe even fork it in order to implement the many ideas that I had for this game... I wanted to make a C# reimplementation in Unity3D this summer but this is better because it's closer to the original, much more authentic.

And it's good for Windows users too, because this game no longer works on post-XP machines, at least in my experience (I did see it once in W7 but didn't work for me. Not a chance on 8/10 tho). It was kinda ironic now that I think of it... a Windows game not working on Windows but working on Linux/Mac with Wine :)

View video on youtube.com

Wow it even features that glitched turn at 2:50. This is the best!


Last edited by 1mHfoksd1Z on 21 Jun 2016 at 10:42 am UTC

[...]I'm so gonna study every bit of code when I have the time, maybe even fork it in order to implement the many ideas that I had for this game... [...]

You're going to have a hard time. As far as I can see, every bit of game logic is in a nice big decompiled assembler file and the only open source part of this is the SDL wrapper.

Mathieu Comandon (of Lutris fame) just posted a nice precompiled archive of this engine on Google+ for anyone who has issues (or no time) compiling this! Thanks Mathieu!