Just as the giant monster movies tend to be translated into strange foreign languages, so battalion now runs on many strange platforms far from its Silicon Graphics (SGI) home.
Here you can download battalion for several different hardware platforms Using both OpenGL and the Mesa 3D graphics library.
The Mesa 3D graphics library allows programs written with OprenGL to be used on platforms which do not currently have a version of the OpenGL library or platforms where you have to pay big bucks to get OpenGL. This way-cool library is (c) Brian Paul. For more information you can see the Mesa WWW page .
battalion has been compiled and tested under SunOS 4 (4.1.4 specifically), Solaris 2 (2.4 specifically), HP-UX (9.03 specifically), Linux, Macintosh, Windows 95/NT/xp and the BeOS. Performance varies greatly depending on the available hardware, but with a 'decent' machine the game runs pretty well. What exactly a 'decent' machine is I can't really say at the moment :).
The Mesa version of battalion has its graphics simplified slightly compared to the OpenGL version to try and increase the speed. In version 1.2 sound effects & music are only available for Silicon Graphics workstations; rudimentary sound and music are available under SunOS and Solaris in version 1.3; the mac version has sound and music.
I would like to collect some statistics on how fast battalion runs on various hardware to give people an idea how the game will play before they download it; so if you have a particularly good or bad experience please let me know about it (aej@evl.uic.edu)
One quick way to get a nice speed increase on a UNIX machine
is to set the following Mesa
environment variable:
setenv MESA_BACK_BUFFER X
to download your very own GZIPPED (.gz 1593K) copy of battalion 1.3 to play
on a Sun with SunOS 4. I compiled this version using Mesa 2.1.
Click
to download your very own GZIPPED (.gz 1266K) copy of battalion 1.2 to play
on a Sun with Solaris 2 (especially 2.4). This version was
compiled by Johan Hagman (Johan.Hagman@mailbox.swipnet.se) using Mesa 1.2.8
and OpenGL for Solaris so
I take even less responsibility than for the other versions of battalion :) )
What do I do after downloading?
I would currently say a 'decent' Sun to play battalion should be at minimum a colour SPARCStation 5.
The Mesa SunOS version requires 'libXext.so' (preferably libXext.so.4.10) be available where your shared X libraries normally reside (look at your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to see where this is.) If you don't see this library then you should convince your sysadmin to create it (libXext.a and libXext.so.4.10) and put them in a convenient directory and add the path to that directory into LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Click
to download the latest official Linux version of battalion 1.4
including source code. This version works fine as of Red Hat 9, but does not
include sound or music. For that, look a few lines down.
Click
to download a Mesa Linux version of battalion 1.4 with working sound,
including source code. This version was created by 'Sasha.'
... and if you happen to have a 3dfx board then you will want to download this patch-file. This patch file was made by Damien Miller (dmiller@vitnet.com.sg)
the original 'semi-official' Linux version using Mesa 1.2 was available at http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/x11/video/INDEX.html. But most of the necessary files disappeared. bummer. Then there was a linux version compiled with Mesa 2.0 at http://129.22.250.154/battalion/index.html but its not accessible any more. bummer.
Click
to download the version of battalion that
Andrew (kazami at ntlworld.com) updated in May 2002 so that it runs
at a reasonable speed with sound under Linux which was later patched by
Eero Tamminen (oak at welho.com) and then later again patched by Simon Boggis
(simon@dcs.qmul.ac.uk) in late 2003. This is the version that I run on my Linux box.
note that I did not compile this version so I take even less responsibility than for the other versions of battalion :)
to download your very own binhexed/compacted copy of Macintosh battalion 1.5
to play under OS-9.
This version will only run on the power macs.
This release of battalion on the mac is substantially faster than the first beta, and works on the G3 and G4 macs, unlike version 1.4. If you have an older power mac then you should stick with version 1.4 for now which is still available here.
And if you are running OS-X then you should grab the carbon version of battalion 1.5.3 here
to get a copy of the AIX version of battalion.
Copyright © Andrew Johnson 1995-1998