Multiwinia Demo works on Linux with Wine

[Sekenre]

Hi Folks,

I have managed to install and play the Multiwinia Demo on Linux using Wine. It just worked.

What Works:
* Installation
* Automatic updates
* Sound
* Music
* Single player against AI enemies
* All Demo levels and game modes.

What Doesn't:
* Nothing

Not Tested:
* Multiplayer
* Full Game

Caveats:
* I have a beefy machine (see below) but the game really starts to slow down towards the end of a very busy game. It's like moving through treacle, but still playable. I have found that wine's attempts at emulating DirectX 9 may be the cause so I'll need to look at playing with the settings a bit.

Machine Spec:
* Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
* 2GB Ram
* Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS w. 256MB Video Ram
* Arch Linux firestorm 2.6.26-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 9 09:56:28 UTC 2008 x86_64 (obviously I run Wine in 32 bit mode)
* Wine version 1.1.5 pretending to be Windows XP

Yay for introversion!
If I can get the speed problem sorted (or the Linux version is released ) I'll be shelling out for the game!

[RabidZombie]

Multiplayer works fine, according to several members I've been in a game with. The slowing down thing happens to other users, as well. If you find a solution, shout it out. Many people will be glad.

Hopefully it won't be long until the Linux client.

[Jotti]

It works with the latest (unofficial) 7.1.2 build of Crossover Games, too! The game is very much playable, including hosting games

[Sekenre]

Multiplayer works fine, according to several members I've been in a game with. The slowing down thing happens to other users, as well. If you find a solution, shout it out. Many people will be glad.

Hopefully it won't be long until the Linux client.

Looks like running it in windowed mode seems to speed it up a wee bit.

[aoanla]

Do you have any custom alterations to your Wine install? The full version (in Steam) of Multiwinia crashes on my Ubuntu 8.04 64bit box with Wine 1.1.5... so there's either a difference between the demo and the full version, or something different about our configurations.

[multimania]

Ubuntu 8.04 64bit with wine 1.1.5 works perfectly here.

I don't have the steam version, but the steam demo, release version (same executable for demo and full version) and beta versions all work fine.

The only thing that I can think of at the moment is that I've disabled PulseAudio, I'm using plain ALSA.

A native linux version should be on the way -- but, of course, it won't be the steam version.

Good luck -- There is an AppDB page for the IV demo -- http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=8279, perhaps there'll be some answers there.

[aoanla]

Unfortunately, I checked the AppDB entry first - it's not particularly useful.

I do wonder if PulseAudio is the issue here - it wouldn't be the first time that there's been an issue with that breaking Wine.

(As for the linux version - I'm hoping I can gank the game data from the Steam version and use that with the Linux client whenever it comes out. If I can't... well, we'll see if I care enough to buy it again.)

[aoanla]

Well, even after updating to the latest graphics drivers for my card (that's something else to compare - I'm using an nVidia 8800 GT with the 177.78 series beta drivers currently) and setting SoundDriver to "none" in preferences.txt, I still get a crash at the same place (it looks like it tries to change the display and then crashes out - I never get past the "loading" display with the big green darwinian).

It's also definitely /multiwinia/ crashing, as Steam happily continues to run once multiwinia has crashed out.

The last lines in debug.txt are:

Authentication HashToken set to ******** (I starred this out incase it is security-critical)
Available Memory: 1299 MB Physical, 2047 MB Virtual. Sample Cache = 0 MB (0% in use)
PlayerNameString::Set called at 6.9956
Setting up page: Main (0)

The top of ERRORLOG.TXT is

multiwinia caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module multiwinia.exe at 0023:00413353.

Exception handler called in AppMain.

CRASH REFERENCE CODE: 720e951c

Error occurred at 10/5/2008 18:18:54.
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\multiwinia\multiwinia.exe, run by aoanla.
Operating system: Windows XP (5.1.2600).
2 processor(s), type 586.
35% memory in use.
2015 MBytes physical memory.
1300 MBytes physical memory free.
0 MBytes paging file.
0 MBytes paging file free.
2048 MBytes user address space.
2048 MBytes user address space free.
Read from location ff010087 caused an access violation.

Context:
EDI: 0x020ad7be ESI: 0x00000022 EAX: 0xff00ffff
EBX: 0x0064ed50 ECX: 0x020ad7be EDX: 0x00000022
EIP: 0x00413353 EBP: 0x0033ac8c SegCs: 0x00000023
EFlags: 0x00010206 ESP: 0x0033ac08 SegSs: 0x0000002b

Bytes at CS:EIP:
83 3c b0 00 8d 04 b0 75 09 5f 5e 83 c8 ff 5b c2

and it looks like the last module to be loaded was the Wine OpenGL Client library...

does that help anyone to work out which subsystem isn't working properly in wine?

[aoanla]

Hardware Acceleration to "Full" in Winecfg's DirectSound settings fixes this for several people, including me.