Beyond Good and Evil is an arcade action adventure game where you play as Jade the reporter. Battle aliens, solve puzzles, take pictures, race your hovercraft & travel to different cities.





Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Beyond Good and Evil in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the GOG version of Beyond Good and Evil. 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: 4.2.4
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: beyondgoodevil
Click Next


Check all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

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


PlayOnLinux Packages (Components, DLL's, Libraries)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_gdiplus
  
• POL_Install_dsound
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next


Note: All libraries will automatically download and install

Installing Beyond Good and Evil

Click Browse


Select "setup_beyond_good_and_evil_2.0.0.5.exe"
Click Open


Click Next

File Integrity


Check End User License Agreement
Click Options
Uncheck Adobe Reader
Uncheck Desktop icons


Installing


Click "Exit Installer"


PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "BGE.exe"
Click Next


Name your shortcut: Beyond Good & Evil
Click Next


Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select "Beyond Good & Evil"
Click Configure


General Tab
Wine version: 1.6.2


Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of Wine

Click "Make a new shortcut from this virtual drive"
Select "SettingsApplication.exe"
Click Next


Name your shortcut: BGE Settings
Click Next


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



Remove Widescreen bars

Wine Tab
Click Registry Editor


Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Expand Software
Expand Ubisoft
Expand Beyond Good & Evil
Expand SettingsApplication.INI
Expand Basic video


Right-click
Select New
Select DWORD Value


Type: NoBands
Press Enter


Doubleclick NoBands
Type: 1
Click OK


Should look like this


Close Registry Editor

Close Configure

Optimization

Select BGE Settings
Click Run

Select resolution
Click Save



Advanced Settings
Adjust Water detail, Antialiasing, Flare, Shadows quality and Compatibility
Make sure to uncheck Triple-buffering and W buffer & HW Vertex Processing
Click Save
Click Quit



Conclusion:
Beyond runs pretty good on my GeForce 550 Ti. Some of the audio is out of sync during the cutscenes. But the game itsself has a great frame rate and is totally playable and quite fun.
I was happy that the widescreen bars can be removed via registry. Now it runs great in fullscreen.

Video:


Screenshots: