Track Mania Nations Forever, the free racing game from developer Nadeo can now be installed and run rather easily on Linux thanks to a Snap package.
The package was created by Martin Wimpress and Alan Pope from Canonical as a "bank holiday weekend project". I spoke with Wimpress about it and tested it a bit, here's what he said about it:
In addition to having a cool Windows game, it is confined so it doesn't mess with whatever WINE stuff you might already have setup. The snap of tmnationsforever is also a template upon which anyone can create snaps of WINE compatible games and applications.
If your distribution doesn't have Snap support built in yet, find install instructions here. You can install it running this simple command in the terminal:
snap install tmnationsforever snap connect tmnationsforever:joystick
I've noticed, that it doesn't work on the NVIDIA 396 driver series, but it does work fine on the 390 driver.
To be clear, it's not finished yet and they are looking for feedback, which you can do so in this linked forum post. For those interested in the snap template to make your own, it's on GitHub.
I actually played one of the Track Mania games years ago before being a Linux user and I had a serious amount of fun with it, so things brings back some good memories.
I'm not often one to advocate the use of Wine, but taking into account that it's free, old and likely never to be ported to Linux, making use of Wine for a game that works so well seems like a perfect fit. Having it all configured for you with a single package like this, certainly makes it a lot easier too.
Article updated after publishing to point to the newer install method, it's no longer in the unstable channel.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Otherwise the game works perfectly if you have wine installed. I just have a little glitch on the launching menu when it pops up. But hovering the mouse on it make the options appears.
It is still a great game after all these years and it still looks quite good if you max out the graphic settings.
Last edited by Jahimself on 13 June 2018 at 1:27 pm UTC
Quoting: JahimselfNice, if it can make it simpler. Does the snap include like a wrapped version of wine withing the snap?Yes, that's the point of having it in all a single package, it has everything it needs to run. Making it simple and cross-distro compatible. I didn't have a single issue with it, apart from the driver issue I found as noted.
Otherwise the game works perfectly if you have wine installed. I just have a little glitch on the launching menu when it pops up. But hovering the mouse on it make the options appears.
It is still a great game after all these years and it still looks quite good if you max out the graphic settings.
Quoting: muellSo, no mentioning of all the flatpaked games?We're getting to it.
buenaventura Jun 13, 2018
Micromegas Jun 13, 2018
PlayOnLinux has an installation script for Track Mania Nations Forever but it doesn't seem to work. But as mentioned above: It's not necessary at all for this game.
But Snaps or Flatpaks for other Windows games which require some sort of special Wine configurations or additional libraries (normally installed via Winetricks e.g.) would be really great.
abelthorne Jun 13, 2018
Quoting: buenaventuraWhat a good idea, I would love this for alot of titles. Like Hearthstone! Or other F2P games.Saw this on OMGUbuntu: there's a flatpak repo with some games, including Overwatch and World of Warcraft. I'm not sure there are other Blizzard games but it's quite likely they'll add HearthStone and Heroes of the Storm (maybe even StarCraft 2) as they work quite well with Wine. Maybe it's even possible to install them from the Battle.net client that has to be included with Overwatch/WoW, I'm not sure how flatpaks handle downloading data.
Quoting: MakiStrangely enough it complains about lacking dx9 when I try to run it. Shouldn't the snap install that?Last time I installed TMNF with Wine, I don't remember having to install DX9. I think it should work with Wine's implementation.
Last edited by abelthorne on 13 June 2018 at 3:51 pm UTC
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