Fine, but I hope you like Xenonauts :P

Yeah.. in about 40 minutes, I think? It brought a Mac friend along too :P

Unless you are on some very specific distro, you don't ever have to use the command line if you don't want to :D

It's all good :) I just use Linux like Windows in a way and the only time I really make use of the command line is when I want to update my system since the command is easy and running the command is faster than running the GUI version of the update application :)

It really depends on what you are looking for in a distro. There's no "best" distro, only one that fits your personal needs as what works for one person might alienate another :)

I have been using Linux Mint for a while now and it's the most user-friendly distro there is, imho. Heck, even the Windows key opens up the Start menu like it would in Windows :)

It's a Start menu.See the attached pic :)

It still has the unmistakable Windows logo on it :P If it had a penguin then you'd be right :P

I have an easier, relatively speaking, time messing around with Wine than POL for some reason.

For example, I was fighting with Elminage Gothic when Wine updated to 1.7.53 which the XAUDIO2 issue the game had in previous versions. I downloaded the latest Wine source, added all the 32-bit development libraries I could (except for that cursed gstreamer-0.10!!!) and now I can run Elminage Gothic in Linux :D

It's weird but I tried using it with Elminage Gothic, used the same Wine version as it is on my system but did not use "Wine - System" and the game would not even start up. Compiled my own 32-bit Wine with some additional development libraries and I could get the game to work....after rapid-fire pressing the ESC button to get past the initial move you get when you hit "new Game" :D

Sure :)

The main problem with this game is that it requires the latest version of Wine (1.7.53) because they implemented XAUDIO2 support because the game crashed with an XAUDIO2 error in Wine 1.6.2 and Wine 1.7.50 for me.

So here's what I did:

Tossed out all my Wine.

Downloaded the 1.7.53 source.

Before compiling, I ran ./configure a bunch of times and installed whatever multiarch (I think it's the correct term? Basically installing these libs did not require the removal of their 64-bit counterparts :) ) 32-bit development libraries I could so OpenAL, the XInput dev library, some OpenGL library, and left anything else that looked like something I wouldn't need out and then I compiled it as a 32-bit program because Elminage Gothic is a 32-bit program and 64-bit WINE won't run 32-bit programs (AFAIK...all the google results said so....)

Sooo...after all that.

You may need to run a few winetricks such as wmp10 xact quartz and perhaps all the dxd3d_XX tricks just in case.

Now comes the tricky part:

In order to play the game you need to be really quick and MAKE SURE TO SKIP THE INTRO as the game locks up right when it tries to play the intro movie. Once you manage to skip the movie you can play the game proper. So have your trigger finger on the Escape button and as SOON as you press "New Game" start hammering that Escape button.

I recommend emulating a virtual desktop for this at first because if you can's skip the movie it can be a bit of a pain to close. Once you get into the game and make a save file you can then go into your graphics options to set the game to your liking. Also, the game starts with all the sounds set to "1" in the Options menu so if you don't hear any sound, don't freak out :D

I played the game for about an hour or two before I got a random crash but if you save often and in different slots you should be fine :)

I had winetricks wmp installed for Elminage Gothic along with a bunch of other stuff and it would crash in both Wine 1.6.2 and 1.7.50 but without all that fancy chrootin' :)

The problem was the XAUDIO2 support for that particular title, which was fixed in Wine 1.7.53 :)

As for the movie, I have winetricks wmp installed in 1.75.3 and I still have to press the Escape button like I am writing a telegraph in order to skip the intro movie after pressing "New Game". Maybe it's a Mint 17.2 thing or something :)

Also, I personally prefer to have my Wine games without going through chroot hoops because, to my uneducated perspective, it seems like it adds another layer on top of Wine where something can go wrong and I'd rather not have that :) Just my two cents, of course :)
Not sure how it works on Macs but I'd recommend getting Wine 1.7.53 for that one as I've actually managed to play the game instead of getting an XAUDIO2 crash :)

Like I said before, I have "winetricks wmp" installed as the first movie in Elminage, the Ghostlight logo, plays just fine while the other just hangs for whatever reason.

I have tried renaming the offending movie and the game crashes right away and, thus, it must have a .wmv file there, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

You should also try "winetricks xact" :)

As for the offeniong movie file, I think the easiest thing to do is use my Escape button method to get into the game proper, create a save file, and you should no longer have to worry about the offending movie since you'll be loading the game :)

Already tried that by switching the names around. I might try to find a one second .mov file and use that in place of the the intro.mov file :)

This "WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winegstreamer=d" kills the game to the point where I can't even see the main menu. No, I don't have gstreamer support compiled into WIne 1.7.53 since it would require installing 32-bit gstreamer-0.10-dev libraries which would require the removal of their 64-bit counterparts....and everything on my system it seems including my DE and such. Seriously, I tried installing those 32-bit libs via APT and it showed me a list a mile long of things that would be removed because apparently gstreamer doesn't have multi-arch support.


Is there a functional difference between compiling Wine 1.7.53 with the --without-gstreamer flag and just not having the 32-bit gstreamer development libraries in the first place and, thus,not available for compilation?