I decided to give Crysis another try with some of these newer versions of Wine and the knowledge I have gained from the last 6 months. What do you want to hear first? The Good or the Bad? The Good: Crysis installs perfectly from DVD Menu interface works perfectly Game launches and I actually got past the jumping-out-of-the-plane sequence The Bad: Crysis still crashes I can skip the video cut-scenes but still crashes Debug errors are hard to find online So, some positive input and some more testing to do. I've gotten farther than ever before. I've tried several versions of Wine and 1.6-rc4 seems to work best so far... I'm getting a lot of d3dx errors and have tried many different library installations with no consistent results. WineHQs doesn't offer much and the existing tests are from March. I will keep trying and will post my results. Edit: Got Crysis to work with Wine 1.4-d3d_doublebuffer Here's the proof:
Crysis has already claimed the life of one great Linux Gamer (ME! LOL) It may not deserve the life of a Second! ":O}
Ha, I knew Daniel would be the first to respond. I will sacrifice my life once again to see it through... At least until this weekend, then I'll work on something else.
I really looks like there is a memory buffer issue that is still not resolved. There is a special patch that can be applied to Wine, but you have to compile it yourself. Not exactly something that should be included in a Guide. But there are claims that it fixes the memory problem and the game actually works. So I may check in PlayOnLinux Wine Manager and see if someone has included this patch in a version of Wine.
Lately I've been spending time with my music collection and hitting up the Libaray for updates on the artists I've loved all my life... So my attention to my games has been weak... but the wheel will turn and I'll start burning my way thought your guides again with Relish...":O}
No problems with that! But it would be nice from time-to-time if you guys tried out my guides on newer versions of Wine to make sure they still work. If not, I can modify the Guide so it stays up-to-date.
Good Question. Actually I'm trying to make my Guide non-Distro specific. Obviously I can't test them in different Distros, but in theory they should work in any major distro: Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, SuSE, Fedora As long as you have Wine and PlayOnLinux installed and your proprietary drivers installed... it should work.
I'm with rolandttg! Mint 15 and and 64 bit are where it's at! To be honest it's the biggest problem I have in helping you keep your guides"honest". I run 64 bit and the addins don't at all always match up! These days I'd be surprised if most people don't generally use 64 bit and the newest version they can get their hands on. Mint desktops are kinda like Windows in that way, New is what we want....I realize that things are different for Admins when it comes to updates.
Interesting, next time you try a guide let me know what the errors are. Normally if you have all the 32-bit libraries installed in your 64-bit Distro all you have to do is select 32-bit when creating a virtual drive. Everything else should be the same. Also, remember all of these older games are only 32-bit compatible anyways. And chances are will never be 64-bit compatible, so a 32-bit Linux Distro is going to give you more success rate. At least in my experience. So far I've been able to successfully run 87 games in 32-bit Linux. I know this is a problem because most computers these days have 4-8 Gigs of RAM or more... I understand that it is a waste of RAM to use 32-bit Operating Systems but at the same time most these Games don't really need more than 4 Gigs anyways. This will all change with newer games but as of right now most Direct X 9 games that actually run in Linux are only 32-bit compatible. I will eventually move to 64-bit and do some testing, but if you are already telling me that Wine and PlayOnLinux are giving you problems, that isn't promising for Guides. Maybe I'll have to use one of my other computers as a testing environment, but most of them have 5+ year old hardware and I don't feel its a fair test to people who really want to have success with Games. I personally would recommend anyone who wants to try Linux for a gaming replacement over Windows to use these Specs: CPU - AMD Phantom or Intel i RAM - DDR3 2 Gigs or more Video - Nvidia 8800 Dedicated card or newer HD - 7200 Rpm 100 Gig or more (SSD will have huge improvements) OS - Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit or Mint 14 32-bit That is for right now... as things change, Linux changes and so will the gaming experience. Also as more games are going "native" then we'll have less guides, but as long as you have thousands of Direct X 9 compatible games that aren't "native" and require Wine, we will have work to do. But I see where you guys are going with this. Eventually 64-bit will be the standard for all Linux systems and we will need guides that reflect 32-bit games running in this environment. So I will have to think how I'm going to move forward with 64-bit because I'm not convinced that I will have as much success.
My my reason for wanting and using 64 bit is Folding at home. 32 bit only uses one core of my 8 core processor (4 real and 4 logical) and that does translate into an enormous increase in folding speed. Then as you mentioned, there my 16 gigs of ram...what can I say it was cheaper than dirt when I bought it... I don't know (it's been a while since I've reinstalled them) but I'd say between 1/4 and 1/3 of my games run fine in 64 bit It's a lot harder as they WON'T use dot.net and I confess that to often I've just switched over to 32 bit to get something done. The real problem comes when you want to install a non listed game. Trying to find add ins that work in 64 bit can be a real mean bi-ah-che. Finally My though was that someone should be working in 64 bit and in what ever the newest mint is at any given time. This because the future is always over taking us... To be honest my health has not been what I expected it would be when we started GOL and I just haven't had the energy or (due to medications) the clarity to do this aspect of GOL justice. I have a series of Doctor appointments this week and next ( I finally qualify for Medicare) and from these I should have a much better idea what lies ahead for me health wise. There are some real problems with my cardio-vascular system and at the moment it's not clear what if anything can be done about it or how extinctive the problem is. But surgery seems fairly certain at the moment. I wanted to be of much more help and support to you in your endeavors. Oh! One last impediment to my efforts to support your efforts is that I have zero money to buy the games you need someone one to test... So as you can see I'm surrounded with difficulties, as we all, so often are and I will simply have to work thought them as best I can and hope that heaven supports my efforts and guides my outcomes.":O}
I think Booman is correct as he has the knowledge and experience. I work with the limited knowledge that I have. It would be a help to know if 32bit vs 64 or Mint 14 vs 15 makes any difference. As there are so many hardware configurations it would be almost impossible for us to rule that out on issues.
Sorry your health is declining Daniel. Really sucks, specially when you can't play with your computers as much. As we grow I hope more people with different Operating Systems can also create guides so we can cover more ground. Whats interesting is some of these games work on any Distro as long as you have the basic requirements: 32-bit libraries, DirectX 9, Wine & PlayOnLinux That is the cool part. I have a Chromebook with Ubuntu 64-bit and some of my old games still run just fine. I just had to install multiarch and set the virtual drive for 32-bit... I plan to upgrade to Mint 15 eventually, but my Mint 14 is running so well and I'm in the middle of some games. Like I wrote earlier, I don't mind using 64-bit and it would be good for me to get some more experience. I am also starting to feel more comfortable with experimenting more. So maybe its time to use one of my other computers and dual-boot to Ubuntu 64-bit?
Bye the way, as far as I know 32-bit doesn't limit your CPU's but limits your RAM to 3.25 Gigs. But then again I don't have 8 cores... I'll have to research it
Here is a good post on the Mint forum: Multiarch You can probably find them in synaptics package manager too, but the Terminal way is always best.
It is the folding @home app that limits my cores in 32 bit Linux... so one day I'm sure this will be rectified...":O}
Update on Crysis.... I am going to compile Wine 1.6-rc4 with the patch that claims to fix the memory problem. Then I am going to test it in PlayOnLinux. If it works, I can request PlayOnLinux to provide this custom Wine version so anyone can play Crysis.
