Construct 2 inside VMWare Player/Workstation

Anyone out there running this kind of setup?

A Linux/MacOSX host, Windows XP/7/8 guest inside VMWare Player/Workstation (preferably with the Unity seamless mode)?   

If so, how does it work out for you? How's the performance and is there anything to be aware of?   

I recently made the full switch to Ubuntu Linux and am really missing the ability to simply launch Construct 2 and get stuff done.   Wine, unfortunately, is pretty horrible in this regard. There's quite a number of graphical glitches and, of course, everything bears the horribly outdated Windows XP styling.

2nded, wine is no good.

SC2 runs fine on Parallels on OSX, and on Virtualbox, both xP and win7.

best of all, Virtualbox is free.

virtualbox.org

2nded, wine is no good.

SC2 runs fine on Parallels on OSX, and on Virtualbox, both xP and win7.

best of all, Virtualbox is free.

http://virtualbox.org/

So is VMWare Player. ;)

I've actually been a long time user of Virtualbox (it's more stable and takes less time to launch), but the one thing about VMWare that really strikes me as ingenious is the way the guest OS interacts with the host OS.

I tested it at work (Windows 7 host + Ubuntu guest) today. It felt pretty great to have all my Linux applications inside the Windows taskbar. Will be even leaner to have all my Windows applications on my personal Ubuntu station and inside Docky.

Hopefully, I can find a way to remove VMWare Player from all of the docks (probably through gconf), so that I really get this almost native feel.

If all else fails, I'll re-install the whole system and try Xenclient (a bare metal hypervisor for laptops and consumer hardware), which also looks promising.

Ok. This is getting ridiculous.

Tried installing Windows 7 (official Ultimate 64 Bit SP1 iso from Digital River) under VMWare Workstation 9. Ended up crashing and exiting.

Upgraded to VMWare Workstation 10 and tried again.

Now, while it would run quite a lot faster, it tells me that my GPU drivers (AMD fglrx 12.9) are unsupported and then exits right before the first install screen.

Virtualbox would also crash right before the install screen but takes my whole system with it, as well (after rampantly spinning the HDD up and down).

Screw you, Microtard! Blopping frustrating and all this because most developers still fail to see where the true market is at.

hint: it's not the poor Windows peons who are used to getting everything served to them on a golden plate but rather the kind of people who don't mind paying a lot of money for software support and, likewise, don't mind throwing their own weight behind a software project they believe in.

I actually wouldn't mind spending 80% of my weekends to get Construct2, Unity3D and PSM to work, myself. These are pretty much the only three applications I need that wouldn't run well under Linux.

EDIT:

Found a fix to the aforementioned issue.

Turned out, VMWare tried to update some of the kernel modules and failed.

Running "sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all" fixed it. However, it appears to be stuck at "Expanding Windows Files (0%)" now.

For future reference in case anyone needs it:

To open a Parallels Disk on Virtualbox:

Right click the *.pvm file to show contents

Extract the .hdd file

Right click it to show its contents

Extract the .hds file

Rename to .hdd

That's the file Virtualbox can use.

Blinx123 thx for the tip, good to know :)

Finally got Windows 7 installed (took roughly 1 hour and 30 minutes from 0% to 100%).

Runs decent enough without 3D acceleration (still sluggish compared to Windows host though) but crashes with 3D acceleration enabled.

Still not sure why VMWare even released that POS. Seems to me like they're on a Microsoft payroll anyways.

Point in case, I never got any version of VMWare Workstation to behave stable on any non-Windows system.

Anyways. The next thing I'll be trying is KVM with SeamlessRDP.

Not holding my breath though, as there appears to be no 3D driver for it.

Gave it another shot and managed to get VMWare somewhat stable by re-installing GPU drivers (originally attempted to install the recent beta ones, which ended up breaking my APU thus leaving me with a power hungry GPU) and re-initiating some of the VMWare specific modules.

It's still awfully slow and crashes whenever I try to move a maximized program (i. e. Construct 2, which launches maximized by default) into Unity mode.

After that disastrous bit, I decided to give Virtualbox another chance and, lo and behold, I found the optimal settings (which is, basically, disabling all kinds of acceleration during the initial installation) to successfully install it.

It's pretty sleek and fast (especially in comparison to VMWare) and, after installing Guest Additions and runtimes (.Net, DirectX9, etc), I'm able to run many applications rather decently.

Seamless mode is rather broken on Compiz, unfortunately. With the Windows 7 Basic theme, I never get more than 1/3 of a window and with Windows 7 Aero, everything changes to a single color (including the text.

Strangely, OpenGL/WebGL content doesn't work 'cept in software mode or converted to DirectX. Google Chrome won't display any WebGL content and while Firefox is able to display most, it crashes whenever I try to access the WebGL samples hosted on scirra.com.

Tomorrow, I'm replacing the standard Direct3D implementation with a fanmade DirectX8/9/10 wrapper I found someplace else. After that, I'll pack everything I need into RemoteApps (requires Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise) and access them over FreeRDP (probably utilizing the Winconn GUI).

Overall, this seems to be the way to go. It's stable, performs rather decently and, with Winconn, I'll be able to add .desktop icons to my dock.

I'm guessing you'tr inyng to instlal slimDX. I did that, didn't notice a difference. Remember to have a backup image in case anything fails.

BTW, are these two ticked?

<img src="http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/9597/virtbox3d2d.jpg" border="0" />

img862.imageshack.us/img862/9597/virtbox3d2d.jpg

I have Aero and everytihng else disabled, 3d acceleration and 2d accelration enabled, and VBox runs stable AFAIR.

Not quite. I was actually thinking about WineD3D.

See here:

wizandchips.blogspot.de/2010/01/how-to-enable-directx9-or-10-in.html

One thing that will make me hate VMWare and Microsoft forever is the fact that my Ubuntu setup has become dysfunctional due to what I had to do in order to get VMWare working.

I can't suspend, restart or shut down my laptop. Even after uninstalling all the components, re-initializing the kernel modules and updating GRUB.

Already manually turned off my computer 20 times. A few more and it'll break my HDD :(

EDIT: Ok. Tried pretty much everything I could (including purging everything I installed yesterday, updating fglrx again and applying more recent kernel modules). Looks like I'll need to wrap up the business (i. e. finish setting up RemoteApp/RemoteFX and try Construct 2 in it) and then start re-installing my precious little setup :(

Lesson learned. One should always keep a copy of Clonezilla around. Likewise, one should never use VMWare products on a Linux machine, when Virtualbox or KVM are just so much more mature.

EDIT2: Spent almost 9 hours crafting a fix, but now everything is back to normal (better than normal, actually, since I also shaved off a few seconds of boot-time) yay! Will, hopefully, be able to post some screenshots of my final setup by Friday.