The Direct2Drive release of SPOGS Racing, is a downloadable 140mb .zip file,
which once decompressed contains the installer and game components, plus a
bundled version of directx9.0c (which I declined to install, having already
installed directx runtime modern into the bottle using cxinstallwizard).
Game starts and runs, but I was immediately confronted with a problem -
it steals the mouse, there is no mouse input it seems (in linux you can
Alt-Tab your mouse back) -- keyboard input was working, to a point wherein
I discovered the Esc key wasn't working, and so you could end up in a
situation (options menu) without any way of 'backing out' to the main menu
screen again....
I realized I had the logitech gamepad plugged in, picked it up, and found
most of the game menu/control had been automagically assigned to one or
another of the gamepad keys, and was able to play the game like that with
no problems. (the rest of the keyboard input seems to work, just not the
Esc key)....the game itself (with 'emulate a virtual desktop' ON in winecfg)
concludes it will start at 1024x768 -- it's s small and reasonable simple
arcade style racing game, and so had no trouble at all, running very well
with good framerates.
The game has some kind of issue running in COG-8.0 in that it does strange
things like getting stuck in third gear, concluding you've taken your finger
off the throttle when you haven't...or the controls suddenly freeze up and/or
your 'car' will start doing things that you aren't telling it to do. My son
reckons he's seen this before, in a -real- windows XP environment, with any
number of games that have come from the console scene, and subsequently been
ported to PC. Other than this, it ran fine.
This Direct2Drive version, uses the 'Securom' online activation/registration
method to unlock your game installation. This all worked 'out of the box'
with COG-8.0 and linux...see the tips&tricks for any installation notes.
Cheers!