Painkiller Black Edition Guide

Painkiller is a FPS inspired by old school shooters where you take down hordes of minions. Play as Daniel Garner stuck in purgatory and makes a deal with an angel to kill satans generals. Equipped with many clever weapons, you can literally slaughter all of satans minions, earn coins, use power-ups and slaughter some more.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Painkiller Black Edition in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the GOG version of Painkiller Black Edition. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.5
Wine: 1.6.2

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.6.2
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.6.2 is installed and you can close this window

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: painkiller
Click Next

Select two options:

• Use another version of wine
• Configure Wine

Click Next

Select Wine: 1.6.2
Click Next

Select "32-bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows version: Windows 7
Click apply

Graphics Tab
Check "automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click OK

Installing Painkiller

Click Browse

Select "setup_painkiller_black_2.0.0.7.exe"
Click Open

Click Next

Check "Yes, I have read and accept the EULA"
Uncheck "Create desktop icons"
Click Install

When GOG is done installing Painkiller
Click Exit

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "Painkiller.exe"
Click Next

Name your shortcut: Painkiller
Click Next

Click Next again

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select "Painkiller"
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 1.6.2
Note: Click the + to download more versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of wine.

Display Tab
Video memory size: Select the amount of Memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching Painkiller

Select Painkiller
Click Run

Note: Click Debug to see errors and bugs

Optimization

Click Options

Click Video

Select a resolution that matches your Linux Desktop
Adjust texture quality

Click Advanced

Adjust:

• Shadows
• Weather effects
• Textures
• Weapon
• Bloom
• Coronas
• Dynamic Lights
• Water
• particles
• Decals
• sky
• Multisampling
• Texture filtering
• Warp
• Clip plane

Click Apply

Rule of Thumb:
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
Not only did Painkiller run flawlessly on my GeForce 550 Ti, I didn't install any libraries at all. It ran out-of-the-box, which is very rare for PlayOnLinux and Wine. Painkiller has a lot of achievements for each level, like destroying all objects, collecting coins, finding secrets, killing all monsters. Then there is higher achievements like kill all mosters with melee claw. So there is some replayablility.
The Black Edition includes the expansion Battle Out Of Hell.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

Excelent game, when out ask 1.5GB of ram and have good particle effects (middle asian stage)

 

Painkiller isn't one of my favorite games, but every time I play it, I have fun!
Nice visuals, intense game-play, short & sweet levels.
Oh and the bosses are fun too

 

Hi Booman, just a quick note to let you know that your guide is just as useful to install the DVD version of the game.

I used wine version 1.7.8 (I have not bothered to install more recent ones yet) and everything went perfectly well.

Of course, with the DVD, you (almost) have to use a no-DVD crack afterwards.

And I think we should not forget that Painkiller Hell & Damnation, which is basically a remake of the original game with better graphics, is available on Steam for Linux.

 

Nice, good to know. So we can play the original without any extra libraries with DVD or GOG. You hsouldn't need a "crack" because Wine should recognize the DVD DRM, but if you are sick of keeping Optical media around, then yes it would help.
The GOG version (which is no longer available) is great because its DRM free and no DVD necessary.

I don't have Hell & Damnation, but does it have all the exact same levels and everything?

 

I am a little embarrassed to say that, although I bought the game as soon as it appeared on Steam (mostly because I wanted to support the publishers for porting the game on my favorite OS), I have yet to play it.

Apparently there are some differences in the gameplay, particularly in the MP mode, but I think you can get a better idea from this discussion on Steam Community.

 

I know there is a co-op integrated into multi-player as well.
I thought about getting it, but I would have to purchase two copies to play co-op at home... or maybe it will play offline.
Most Steam games won't play offline and multi-player anymore. there is no demand for it.
But it sucks thinking about purchasing 6 copies of a game just to play in a LAN party and host locally.