Riven: Sequel To Myst Guide

dwinner75 · Jul 18, 2016

Excellent guide, thank you. Got Riven working on Lubuntu 16.04 with LXDE desktop.

booman · Jul 18, 2016

dwinner75 said:
Excellent guide, thank you. Got Riven working on Lubuntu 16.04 with LXDE desktop.

Thanks! I just posted a guide last Friday on Myst 5: End Of Ages too.

Greatbridge · Oct 25, 2016

Thanks you for the attention to detail. My attempts to install (Mint 18, Cinnamon, 64 bit, Kernel 4.4.0-45, Win 1.8.4) have not been straightforward:
1. Riven CD1 has folders 'data' and 'setup'; CDs 2 through 5 have folders 'Data' and 'Setup' The copy of CD contents to a folder on the desktop results in the creation of folders 'data', 'Data', 'setup' and 'Setup'. Which should be used?
2. Have bungled my way past this issue, I find that the option to 'open' a saved game is greyed out. I can save the game at any point, but cannot open that saved game. This means that I have to start from 'zero' every time and can never get beyond the point of about 1 or 2 hours playing. How do I overcome this issue?

booman · Oct 26, 2016

Strange, I didn't realize the disks had duplicate directories with lowercase and uppercase names. I have a feeling you can combine those and the files in them. Give it a try...

I don't remember having any problems saving or loading the game. You may want to do some tests and save it once, then look for the save file .svn and make sure you have permissions to read/write.

I did some research and there can be issues with save/load if you install the game on one partition but save the game on another partition.

1. Install Riven to your C: drive.
-- a. Be certain that Riven saves its game progress files to your C: drive.
-- b. If you have a very small C: that's reserved for system files only, install Riven to D:. Be certain that Riven saves its game progress files to D:.
2. Start Riven from a fresh boot.
-- a. Reboot, log into Windows with **full Administrator privileges** (NOT into a Limited User or Power User account), and close all open applications. (Open the Control Panel, and select User Accounts. Your User Name should show Administrators under Group.)
-- b. Disable all anti-virus/spyware/adware/pop-up programs running in the background.
-- c. If you have only a software firewall, do NOT disable it.
-- d. Do NOT run any other programs before starting Riven.
3. Never boot up with a CD or DVD in the disc drive.
4. If the Riven disc autostarts when inserted into the drive, cancel back to the Desktop.
5. Always start Riven with the Desktop shortcut/start icon, NOT from the CD menu.

Always start Riven as per steps 2 through 5, and especially ALL of step 2.

RubeRad · Oct 20, 2017

Hey thanks for this guide; I ran into a problem at the "Express Setup" step; Qt32inst.exe crashed.
I clicked Show Details and pasted the first little bit, below; is there anything I can do about this?

This is my first attempt at a PlayOnLinux installation...

Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x0064726b in 32-bit code (0x00413d8b).
Register dump:
CS:0023 SS:002b DS:002b ES:002b FS:0063 GS:006b
EIP:00413d8b ESP:0033e114 EBP:0033e570 EFLAGS:00010202( R- -- I - - - )
EAX:0064726b EBX:0033f9a8 ECX:0033e108 EDX:00000000
ESI:0033f9a8 EDI:ffffffff
Stack dump:
0x0033e114: 0033f9a8 00413d71 0064726f 00411d30
0x0033e124: 0064726f 0041eff1 0064726f 0041f06a
0x0033e134: 0064726f 0040ad63 00431560 0043d386
0x0033e144: 0033f9a8 2e64726f 76726573 2d656369
0x0033e154: 514d6c55 6f2a446e 732e6472 69767265
0x0033e164: 552d6563 6e514d6c 735c2a44 65747379
Backtrace:
=>0 0x00413d8b in qt32inst (+0x13d8b) (0x0033e570)
1 0x0040aa8c in qt32inst (+0xaa8b) (0x0033e738)
2 0x0040abc7 in qt32inst (+0xabc6) (0x0033e900)
3 0x0040abc7 in qt32inst (+0xabc6) (0x0033eac8)
4 0x0040a6fe in qt32inst (+0xa6fd) (0x0033ed1c)
5 0x0040b1a4 in qt32inst (+0xb1a3) (0x7ec88dd0)
6 0xec83f0e4 (0x83e58955)
0x00413d8b: movl 0x0(%eax),%esi
Modules:
Module Address Debug info Name (66 modules)
PE 400000- 602000 Export qt32inst
ELF 7b800000-7ba4b000 Deferred kernel32<elf>
\-PE 7b810000-7ba4b000 \ kernel32
ELF 7bc00000-7bcc8000 Deferred ntdll<elf>
\-PE 7bc10000-7bcc8000 \ ntdll
ELF 7bf00000-7bf03000 Deferred <wine-loader>
ELF 7df7f000-7dfa1000 Deferred imm32<elf>
\-PE 7df90000-7dfa1000 \ imm32
ELF 7dfa1000-7e019000 Deferred rpcrt4<elf>
\-PE 7dfb0000-7e019000 \ rpcrt4
ELF 7e019000-7e12e000 Deferred ole32<elf>
...
...
...

RubeRad · Oct 20, 2017

I tells me I can resume/restart the Qt install, but either way it just keeps crashing. I can't get past this part

RubeRad · Oct 20, 2017

dangit I was so close! I got past the Qt thing by going with custom instead of express, that allowed me to "Skip" the searching for previous verisons part that was causing the crash. It completed, and I got to the "No CD Riven" part, and dragged all the 5-CD data into the virtual drive folder, but chose 'replace' instead of 'don't replace', then when I tried to start it, it said "some riven files missing, reinstall".

Then reinstalling again, I found that I couldn't Browse... to setup.exe again because I had dragged it into the virtual drive -- and then deleted it!

Back to the drawing board...

RubeRad · Oct 21, 2017

OK I did everything from the beginning, got it installed, fired it up enough to do the setup, heard the audio, then tried to start the game, it says "Insert Riven Disc 2", even though I copied everything from Desktop/Riven into the Riven dir in the virtual drive.

I did insert Riven Disc 2, but it won't find it. What am I missing?

RubeRad · Oct 21, 2017

one more comment then bed. I was able to start playing by going into wine config and creating a new D: drive and pointing it at /media/username/Riven2. Then when I got to the cablecar across to the next island I had to use wine config again to remap D: to /media/username/Riven3 -- what a pain! I went and tried it again, and couldn't get the switch to disk 3 to work. Would be much better if I could play without the CD; I tried all kind of things to point D: drive to where all the data is, but it just keeps asking for Disk 2.

Also, like Greatbridge, I can save a game (it saved in the Riven folder right next to Riven.exe), but not reopen it. The File menu shows New... and Save and Save As..., but Open... is greyed out, can't go restore to my previous save state :-(. That makes a long game like Riven pretty much unplayable.

booman · Oct 23, 2017

Welcome to the forum RubeRad! Sorry for my late response. I have not tested Riven in a while and as you noticed, there are a LOT of steps and work-arounds. I do recommend purchasing the DRM free version on GOG because it will probably be a lot less hassle than the CD version.

Did you already try copying all the CD's into a single folder on the desktop?

You are still having issues after doing the "No CD" steps? Something must not have worked...

Also, try a newer version of Wine as well... like 2.0.3 or a "staging" version

RubeRad · Oct 23, 2017

Thanks for checking back booman.

I did copy all the CDs into a folder on the desktop as the first step, and I did the "No CD" steps (which actually left the desktop folder empty, I should have copied, not moved, the files into the virtual drive)

For $5.99, maybe I will try GOG, I guess you download from them what, a single .iso or something? I'm not familiar with GOG, but the website looks pretty legit. It's legal/licensed to use their stuff?

I will try a newer Wine though.

Your No CD instructions don't say about having to set up a letter drive; should that be necessary? What if I clean out the ...\c_drive\Program Files\Riven folder, copy all the CDs into there, and install from the eventual destination? Or copy all the discs first into ...\c_drive\Riven, and install from the virtual drive?

Are there specific option that need to be set up for pointing at the distro with a letter drive? full/relative paths? into virtual drive vs path on the host drive? 'on local hard drive' vs 'CDROM'?

What if, after copying all the CDROM into one folder, I created a DVDROM .iso (or oversize CDROM .iso?), and set up a Wine letter drive to point to that?

Bottom-line though, if Open... previous save state doesn't work, it won't be usable.

booman · Oct 24, 2017

Ok, thank you for confirming all the steps. If I remember correctly... Riven will automatically see all the data from the CD when moved to the

/home/username/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/riven/drive_c/Program Files/Riven

directory. You shouldn't have to mount any drives. I can give it a try again and see if it works the same. Let me know...

GOG is totally legitimate. Is run by Projekt Red who made the Witcher series. Games are priced fairly and no DRM for any game. I haven't tested the Riven from GOG, but you can post here if you have problems.

We have a lot of GOG guides so you can follow the basic steps if you decide to purchase Riven from GOG.

I'm not sure if Wine can read ISO files, I've never tried. Honestly I've never needed to... and I've tested hundreds of games.

I'm pretty sure I was able to save and load games in Riven. Otherwise I would not have posted the guide. No being able to save is a "game breaker"

Let me know if you want me to test my Riven CD ROM set again.

Also, make sure you have the newest version of PlayOnLinux installed too: 4.2.12

RubeRad · Oct 24, 2017

I installed sudo apt-get install playonlinux just for this project, so I assume it's fairly up to date, although I did see something about needing to add a repository to get the very newest version.

The iso stuff turned up when I was googling about how to get wine to play with CDROMs. If I shouldn't have to deal with it, I'll try to avoid it.

What actually do you get/download from GOG? If not an .iso, is it a .zip that unpacks to an install directory that would play the role of ~/Desktop/Riven in your guide?

I will give it another try with latest PlayOnLinux, and newer Wine than 1.6.2 and my Riven box set, and report back. Thanks for sticking with me!

BTW, I'm using Ubuntu 16.04.

booman · Oct 24, 2017

I'm sorry, you asked that same question before and I didn't answer it.
Most of the time GOG will give you an EXE installer. It bundles the game and their installer. For native Linux games you will get an .SH binary installer.

Since its DRM free and no CD ROM, you won't have to worry about mounting anything or copying anything. Everything should be bundled up in the installer from GOG.

As for PlayOnLinux version, I always go to the PlayOnLinux website and download the .DEB file and install it. You don't have to uninstall the old one and it will be updated. Sometimes the Ubuntu/Mint repositories host older versions.