Gametrailers.com: Downloads only for registered people

„You must register or log in to use this feature.“

That’s just what I got as I wanted to download the newest AVGN episode. I do not like websites which do that – especially if they didn’t before. It is just unnecessary and complicates the usage. Anyway, JDownloader eats this link:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/51566?type=wmv

Although it does not directly get the video file, it downloads the webpage and allows you then to choose which files you want to download. You can find the videos easily by their size.

Wine DLL error

If you get an error like that:

wine Program.exe
err:module:attach_process_dlls „SomeRelatedDLLinSameFolder.dll“ failed to initialize, aborting
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L“path/to/Program.exe“ failed, status c0000005

And you have tripplechecked, that the application is supported properly by wine, it might even have worked before, the DLL file is not damaged and you do not know what to do now?

Check if the volume where Program.exe and especially the dll file are on is mounted with an exec flag or whether the files have the exec flag. Otherwise wine just won’t start the dlls!

Update: There’s a feature request going on in order to implement a descriptive error when wine notices that it can not execute a dll file. See WineHQ Bugzilla #11661.

„Cannot talk to klauncher“

You might get this error message when you try to start a KDE application outside of the K Desktop Environment (gnome for example).

solution:

kdeinit

Crashday: fix for „blendTimePassed >= -0.001″

Last week a friend and I wanted to play Crashday. We already did so a few years ago and it worked more or less fine – its a buggy game. This time I am using my current Arch Linux only setup while he has both Arch Linux and Windows installed. The first suprise was that the game was working better with wine that with Windows on my friend’s setup. Sometimes the game starts, sometimes it doesn’t. But with wine it always works.

Anyway, we both tried wrecking bots and it worked fine, but as we tried multiplayer, my game (his one ran fine) always crashed shortly after the game was started. To be exact after the countdown of the game.

The error message I got said:

!!! Fatal error !!!
Assertion failed!
blendTimePassed >= -0.001

(file ..\netplayers\host_remotecar.cpp, line 253)

Trace stack:

(It doesn’t say anything after Trace stack, propably because they didn’t compile the game with debugging symbols)

My friend told me that we should be able to apply a hack on their exe in order to make the game work. So i started up my vmware’d XP and Crashday.exe in ollydbg (which doesn’t really work with wine). The error we had can be found as string two times in the binary and I started to take a closer look on the first one. In the code, it compares some value with -0.001 and if it is below that, it jumps to an address where it shows the error dialog (and kills the game).

Ollydbg, fixing Crashday

The trick is to remove a FSUB which substracts the value that will be compared with another one. This way it will stay over -0.001 and the game continues.

I don’t know if this error happens only with wine, but if you follow this tutorial, you should be able to fix it.

Oh and please note that the addresses on the screenshot will propably differ from your one.

Have fun with that awesome game