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Has anyone tried Pipelight to play Web based games with Flash or Unity?

The website claims they use WINE and integrate it with your Linux browser to allow plugins to work.  This way we can play Unity-based games like DeadFrontier or Flash games.

I'm thinking about checking it out because I can't get Firefox to run in PlayOnLinux anymore.

Yes, and they claim other plugins can work in Linux.

I'll post my reports once I give it a try.  I was just wondering if anyone else has tried it out.
http://deadfrontier.com really want to play deadfrontier in Linux

Edited by booman

I am one of the developers of Pipelight, and can confirm that it should work. ;) I have to admit that it can sometimes be a bit tricky though, it was working way better in Chrome/Chromium, but unfortunately they removed NPAPI support some versions ago. If you need any help just ask.

Awesome!  Thanks for working on the Pipelight project!  Its amazing what Wine can do these days.

I'll use Firefox and try the steps from the Pipelight website.  I'm hoping to test some Flash and Unity games in the browser, then I plan to make a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

Do you mind if I shoot questions here?

No, as already said in my previous message, feel free to ask if you have any questions. ;)

I tried PlayOnLinux one more time this morning and got DeadFrontier running...
It was much easier than I thought.  Basically, install any version of Unity Web Player, then go to the website. Launch the game and it will error, if you click "details" it will give you the information for which version of Unity is required.

Go to the Unity archives:  Unity Web Player Archives

Download the version needed by the game and then it works.  You can confirm by going to "Add-ons" in Firefox and check which version is installed.  Firefox will complain that the plugin is out-of-date, but we don't care as long as the game runs.

I'll still try Pipelight as well and determine which is easier.

I have to be honest, the PlayOnLinux way, is super easy and performance was great with my GeForce 550 Ti

I tried Pipelight this morning...

Followed all of the instructions:

• Installed PPA, update, pipelight, etc
• Installed user agent
• Enabled unity web player
• Launched Firefox
• Set as Windows/Firefox 29 via User Agent
• Navigated to DeadFrontier.com
• Allowed flash player
• Allowed Ice Tea Java

But the browser wants me to download and install the Unity Web Player...
I downloaded it but how do I install it?

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've been quite busy during the last few days. When you have enabled Unity, it will be installed automatically when you visit a website which needs it. Your error description is very general, so I'm not sure what exactly causes it, but I'll list a couple of ideas / steps to track it down below:

* Does the plugin appear in "about:plugins" ? If not, or if a "Pipelight Error" is listed instead of the plugin, does it help to run "sudo pipelight-plugin --create-mozilla-plugins" ?

* Did you also change the browser platform, as described in http://pipelight.net/cms/installation-user-agent.html#section_1_2 ? Its required for many Unity3D websites.

* Do you have installed browser extensions like FlashBlock / NoScript / HttpsEverywhere? Those might block the plugin execution or cause all kind of other weird errors. It is recommended to disable them completely while running Pipelight.

* Did you try to run "pipelight-plugin --system-check" already? If one of the tests fails, you can check http://pipelight.net/cms/faqs/faq-most-common-problems.html for corresponding steps to solve the issue. Please note that not all "failures" are really criticial, feel free to share the log if you want me to take a look at it.

If none of the ideas helps, it might be easier when you join our IRC channel #pipelight for live support, so we can help to track this issue.

Thanks for your detailed reply.

I was able to get DeadFrontier running in Mint 17 64-bit perfectly.  I'm not even sure what changed, but all-of-a-sudden it worked.

I tried Pipelight on my Ubuntu 12 laptop but kept getting the "Install Unity Web Player" icon.
Not sure why it wouldn't work...

* Does the plugin appear in "about:plugins" ? If not, or if a "Pipelight Error" is listed instead of the plugin, does it help to run "sudo pipelight-plugin --create-mozilla-plugins" ?

Yes, but I went to Firefox "Add-ons" instead.  I'll try "about:plugins" as well

* Did you also change the browser platform, as described in http://pipelight.net/cms/installation-user-agent.html#section_1_2 ? Its required for many Unity3D websites.

Yes I used Windows/Firefox 29 with the UserAgentSwitcher

* Do you have installed browser extensions like FlashBlock / NoScript / HttpsEverywhere? Those might block the plugin execution or cause all kind of other weird errors. It is recommended to disable them completely while running Pipelight.

* Did you try to run "pipelight-plugin --system-check" already? If one of the tests fails, you can check http://pipelight.net/cms/faqs/faq-most-common-problems.html for corresponding steps to solve the issue. Please note that not all "failures" are really criticial, feel free to share the log if you want me to take a look at it.

Thank you, I will report my findings

Two more questions:

1. Does Pipelight automatically install the correct version of Unity compatible with the game?
   My previous experience with Unity in PlayOnLinux required me to install older versions of Unity Web Player, other wise the game woudn't work.
2. Does the Unity Web Player install in the background?  I never officially saw it install or even had to manually install it.

Edited by booman

Two more questions:

1. Does Pipelight automatically install the correct version of Unity compatible with the game?
   My previous experience with Unity in PlayOnLinux required me to install older versions of Unity Web Player, other wise the game woudn't work.
2. Does the Unity Web Player install in the background?  I never officially saw it install or even had to manually install it.

Quote from booman

Awesome!  So I should launch Dead Frontier first and when it looks for the Untiy Web Player plugin, Pipelight will automatically install it?

After that do I just close Firefox and run this:

sudo pipelight-plugin --enable unity3d

Then launch Firefox again and Dead Frontier should load... I'm hoping at least.

How can I unistall Pipelight and its plugins in order to go through the steps again?

 

Awesome!  So I should launch Dead Frontier first and when it looks for the Untiy Web Player plugin, Pipelight will automatically install it?

After that do I just close Firefox and run this:

sudo pipelight-plugin --enable unity3d

Then launch Firefox again and Dead Frontier should load... I'm hoping at least.

No, the order is not correct. First enable unity3d (with the command "sudo pipelight-plugin --enable unity3d"), afterwards visit a page which needs it - then it will be installed automatically.

How can I unistall Pipelight and its plugins in order to go through the steps again?

 

Quote from booman

Perfect, I will start by removing with

sudo apt-get remove pipelight

Then I'll remove the other directories manually and then start over again.
I just want to be totally sure of the steps because I'm creating a tutorial with screenshots.

Thanks again for all the help!

I tried the remove command and this is the output:

booman@linuxmint ~ $ sudo apt-get remove pipelight
[sudo] password for booman: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'pipelight' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libbsd0:i386 libdb5.1:i386 libhdb9-heimdal:i386 liblcms1:i386 libldb1:i386
  libllvm3.3:i386 libmng1:i386 libntdb1:i386 libpopt0:i386
  libpython-stdlib:i386 libpython2.7:i386 libpython2.7-minimal:i386
  libpython2.7-stdlib:i386 libtalloc2:i386 libtasn1-3:i386 libtevent0:i386
  libwbclient0:i386 libwebp4:i386 python-dnspython python-xkit wine1.4
  wine1.4-amd64 wine1.4-i386:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 55 not upgraded.

I checked the install command and realized I needed to use:

sudo apt-get remove pipelight-multi

Edited by booman

I went through all the steps again and Unity is still not activating.  I don't see it in about:addons in the plugins area.

I don't remember seeing there previously when the game worked.... but Pipelight downloads the unity player automatically when relaunching Firefox

I did the system-check command and noticed this:

Checking libraries...
libcapi20.so.3: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcapi20.so.3
libcups.so.2: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcups.so.2
libdbus-1.so.3: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3
libfontconfig.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1
libfreetype.so.6: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6
libGL.so.1: /usr/lib/nvidia-331/libGL.so.1
libgnutls.so.26: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnutls.so.26
libgsm.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgsm.so.1
libjpeg.so.8: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.8
libncurses.so.5: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
libnetapi.so: missing
libodbc.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libodbc.so.1
libpcap.so.0.8: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcap.so.0.8
libpng12.so.0: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0
libsane.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsane.so.1
libtiff.so.5: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtiff.so.5
libtxc_dxtn_s2tc.so.0: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtxc_dxtn_s2tc.so.0
libv4l1.so.0: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l1.so.0
libva.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libva.so.1
libva-drm.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libva-drm.so.1
libva-x11.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libva-x11.so.1
libX11.so.6: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
libXcomposite.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcomposite.so.1
libXcursor.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcursor.so.1
libXext.so.6: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6
libXi.so.6: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXi.so.6
libXinerama.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXinerama.so.1
libXrandr.so.2: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrandr.so.2
libXrender.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1
libxslt.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxslt.so.1
libXxf86vm.so.1: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXxf86vm.so.1
Libraries: FAILURE

Do you think the problem is that I need 32-bit libraries of these?
The game previously worked fine which means I should already have those...

I noticed when uninstalling pipelight-multi that it removed a bunch of 32-bit libraries and said they were not needed:

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libbsd0:i386 libdb5.1:i386 libgsm1:i386 libhdb9-heimdal:i386 liblcms1:i386
  libldb1:i386 libllvm3.3:i386 libmng1:i386 libntdb1:i386 libpcap0.8:i386
  libpopt0:i386 libpython-stdlib:i386 libpython2.7:i386
  libpython2.7-minimal:i386 libpython2.7-stdlib:i386 libtalloc2:i386
  libtasn1-3:i386 libtevent0:i386 libva-drm1 libva-drm1:i386 libva-x11-1:i386
  libva1:i386 libwbclient0:i386 libwebp4:i386 python-dnspython python-xkit
  wine-staging wine-staging-amd64 wine-staging-i386:i386 wine1.4 wine1.4-amd64
  wine1.4-i386:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

Nevermind, it appears apt-get is recommending to remove them.

Edited by booman

when your browser doesn't recognize pipelight, make sure that you executed "sudo pipelight-plugin --update" and if it still doesn't work after restarting the browser, execute "sudo pipelight-plugin --create-mozilla-plugins". There was a recent change in Firefox, which can have the effect, that the plugin doesn't load at all if it doesn't load fast enough. So especially in case of a slow download, executing "sudo pipelight-plugin --create-mozilla-plugins" might be necessary.

Its normal that uninstalling leads to a lot of unused dependencies. However, they will all be used again when reinstalling Pipelight. The failure in the list of libraries is also harmless. The list contains all libraries which are theoreticalls supported by Wine, but not all of them are required for Pipelight/Silverlight. See http://pipelight.net/cms/faqs/faq-libraries-missing.html for more details on which libraries are important.

Sorry for the typo in the package name, on Ubuntu/Debian "pipelight" is a convenience package for those who only need Silverlight, whereas "pipelight-multi" is the recommended package which adds support for all plugins. On other distributions this is a bit different, thats why I mixed this up ;)

Yeah I did both update and create-mozilla-plugins, then Firefox pops up with a downloading Unity window.

So it seems everything is working but Dead Frontier refuses to see I have it installed and the Add-ons will not show that Unity is installed.

I'll try another site tomorrow and see what happens.

One thing that is strange is when I click "install Unity" there is a Java error and I have to "allow java" then refresh.  When that happens, Unity will download and I can install just like in Windows.

Not sure why Java is related to Unity at all, but it was pretty strange. Either way, Dead Frontier still refuses to see my Unity plugin

I just found this Pipelight tutorial (in Spanish)

I did Google Translate and the tutorial says Silverlight is required for Unity Web Player.
This has to be wrong because I've used Unity Web Player in Windows and never installed Silverlight.