Quest to run the 25 year old Star Wars Force Commander video game

Gaming
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Originally built for Windows 95/98 and coddled in obscure old DirectX calls,
this has been a fun challenge one of which doesn't run OOTB even on modern windows systems.

It often requires even on windows, community patches + no cd'cracks plus running in compatibility mode or just outright emulation to run.

If you ARE looking for a 3d RTS game experience in the star wars universe Empire at War is a MUCH MUCH better offering in this space, it has more depth then force commander, better graphical fidelity and camera controls and overall tighter gameplay.

So running on Linux would equally be a challenge right! pretty much the same level of difficulty.

Heres how far I got and a thread to get the ball rolling for someone whos more skilled at getting very very very old games to run with incredibly niche communities
I noticed there was no such thread anywhere on the internet about running this game on Linux/Zorin OS.

so heres how far I got and kind of putting it out there to see if anyone else can figure it out :slight_smile:

I received the original ISO's from the release disc at 1.0, although these same files can be found online,

I ran the install.exe from disc1 via Zorins "WIndows App Support"

by right clicking on the app and then clicking on "Install windows application" then clicking on "Run Anyway" when the pop-up appears.

(You can attempt to run this via proton, although it actually doesn't play nice, after attempting several versions, I can safely say the Windows App Support is the BEST way to run the installer)

Once partially installed the installer will ask you to insert CD 2, I then completed this step and Voila we had 2000's Star Wars - Force Commander installed:

Next step THE LOADING SCREEN

when trying to boot the game on any main operating system even with the CD Installed, there appears to be some bug or mismatch between how cd's are expected to exist where Windows and Linux both can just not detect the CD and thus you are stuck on the loading screen.

Downloading and implementing a community no-cd patch (I do not recommend this as lots of malware/spyware/etc/etc gets placed into piracy ajacent things like no cd'patchs/cracks.)

worked for me as a solid work-around.

After the initial loading please wait, I was met by a black window and nothing else, it did not crash or hang which indicates it is working under the hood but not actually displaying on x11 OR on Wayland. closing the program and attempting to restart it will greet you with a "Another instance of this application is already running" Error and you will need to restart your pc to retry.

SO this is where we are on running this 25 year old game on Linux,
Can you run it; Yes
Would you actually want to play it; Not really/its very janky and Empire at War is a better Game in so many ways covering the same Era with more mechanics.
Can you play it; with my understanding as a Linux beginner (2 years) and running obscure games (Warcraft 1,2,3 + Empire Earth)

Probably but it would take someone smarter then me to figure out why it doesn't actually display what it is clearly rendering and doing on-screen.

Ideally; someone who cared about this game (5 people) would craft some sort of bottle for it considering it is a 16-bit windows 95/98 game using DirectX7 + DirectPlay.

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I have successfully installed Homeworld in the past, together with BlackHawk Down on earlier versions of Zorin. My youngsters when they were younger liked to play the Petz game that would not run on Windows 7 but did on GNU/Linux.

I did write a Tutorial on here on how to approach this. First I put a game CD into the Optical drive to see what the label of the CD is (its name). I then open the fake C:\ drive in wine and create a folder with the name of the CD. I then copy the entire contents of the CD into this new folder. I select everything I have copied, right-click Properties and change Permission to run as a program. If the game requires the presence of a CD to be in the Optical drive to play I get around this by using K3b to create a toc.bin which effectively creates a virtual CD and select this to run the game.

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ahh good one to try,

I was succsessfull in running the .exe via Proton-Experimental, however it crashes to desktop immediately after that first loading screen.

I am aware that it being a Directx7 game means this is quite a task compared to more modern games.

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Did you also choose correct Win version in winecfg?

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It will certainly require dxvk7, then, for translating directx 7 to vulkan

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That did it!

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Howdy folks replying as closed,
We have successful been able to run Force Commander made for Windows 95/98 via Bottles on Linux!!!!

Since this is the first Linux thread about this game, here are the rough steps.

  1. run the Install.exe from disc 1 using the built-in "Install Windows Application" option on right click.
  2. It will stop you half way through and ask you to insert disc 3 before continuing.
  3. Once setup is completed you will need to download bottles.
  4. Once bottles in downloaded in the top left hand corner there is a button to create a new bottle, Create one and set the Architecture to 32-bit
  5. Next once the bottle is created you will click on the > arrow and find settings then set the Windows Version to windows 98.
  6. Next you will go out and click "Browse /C Drive" you can create a folder inside of that Drive Called "Games" and copy paste your Force Commander install inside of the Bottle that you have created.
  7. Next click on Run Executable and point it towards your "Force.exe" .exe
    mine was located in "/home/jethro/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/For-FOrce/drive_c"

And then Run and enjoy an absolute classic, I do believe their may be some configurations to improve the resolution for bigger screens however I have not figured this out.

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Interesting post! Typically I don't recommend trying to run any 90's era games, as they rely on stuff that is no longer a thing in modern computer's, like disk drives for example. My latest computer didn't come with one, as none do today. I did buy a cheap USB external disk drive, for the extremely rare, if ever, occasion, I ever have to run a disk.

Also yes, you mentioned the ancient DirectX calls, and coded for Win98 days, just barely prior to WinXP showing up on scene. Even some WinXP games you'd be lucky to run, let alone 90's era Win98 games. Its nearly or is impossible to get those games running.

You are also correct that, even Linus has talked about difficulties getting 32-bit or 16-bit games, running on a modern 64-bit Win11 system. Usually I find, the best way to get an old Windows game running, is to buy the game again on Steam, install it through Steam, and activate the Proton-GE compatibility.

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I got lucky with some of the Older Civilization games, its definetly a case of the further back you go the less of a fun time it is, Caesar 3 was very straightforward.

This is the most complex "old" game I have run or tried to run on windows/linux