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Unofficial Guide to Running SoaSE on Wine

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Unofficial Guide to Running SoaSE on Wine

For anyone who wants Sins on Linux

from Sins Forums
As suggested by TFL BigBANGtheory here is a basic guide to installing Sins of a Solar Empire on Linux using Wine. Please note that Linux is not officially supported by Stardock or Ironclad. Also, please do not send in any minidumps that are generated while running Sins on Linux. The problem may be Linux/Wine related and not a problem with Sins itself so we don't need the nice devs wasting their time looking at them - they have enough work already.

Summary of steps:
1. Install Wine
2. Configure Wine with winecfg
3. Install Sins of a Solar Empire
4. Run Sins with Wine

Step 1: Install Wine.

If you are running Ubuntu or another Debian based distro, good instructions for doing this can be found here: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb (Thanks XRolando!). Please note that Ubuntu users cannot simply install it from the Ubuntu repos because the version currently in the Ubuntu repositories (as of January 3rd 2008) is outdated and will not run Sins properly. Version I used was 0.9.52.

Instructions for other distros can be found here: http://www.winehq.org/site/download.

Step 2: Configure Wine

To configure Wine run winecfg from a terminal:

$ winecfg

This will launch a setup GUI. Here are the settings I used (note that there may be other ways to make it work... this is just what I did). Any settings I don't mention were just left at their defaults:

Under the Applications tab I set the Windows Version to Windows XP

Under the Graphics tab:
  • I unchecked Allow DirectX Apps to stop the mouse leaving their window
  • Unchecked Allow the window manager to control the windows.
  • I did check Emulate virtual desktop and set it at 1024x768 (adjust that to your own preference). This is not required but I recommend it so that if the game freezes up you still have use of your monitor to kill the process.

Under the Drives tab I just clicked Autodetect and accepted the defaults.

Under the Audio tab I unchecked the OSS drivers and checked the ALSA drivers.

Click OK to exit winecfg.

Step 3: Install Sins

There are two options for installing Sins.

Option 1: Installing From DVD

If you purchased Sins at retail or ordered online and chose to receive a boxed copy then you can install from the DVD. This is probably the fastest way to do it.

To install, simply change directory to your DVDROM drive and run setup.exe with Wine. My DVD drive is found at /media/cdrom0/ but yours may be different.


$ cd /media/cdrom0
$ wine setup.exe


This will launch an installer. Follow the instructions it gives you. Should be very straightforward. When it finishes it will launch Sins. Now that it is installed we need to install the latest patch (at the time of this writing it was version 1.02) so exit Sins for now and go to https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/update.aspx (you will need to be registered and logged in to do this) and download the patch. Once downloaded, run the patch with Wine:


$ cd /directory/where/you/downloaded/the/patch
$ wine Sins_Bonuspack_102_setup.exe


The wizard this launches is also very straightforward.

Option 2: Installing from Stardock Central

If you purchased Sins online, don't have your DVD yet, or just don't feel like using the DVD then you will need to install Stardock Central in order to download and install Sins.

Download the Stardock Central installer from www.stardock.com then run it with wine:

$ cd /directory/where/you/downloaded/the/installer
$ wine sdcentral_setup.exe


This will launch the SDC installer. Follow the directions exactly as if you were running it in Windows.

Once installed, launch SDC with Wine:


$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Stardock/SDCentral/
$ wine sdcentral.exe


Then use SDC to install Sins as if you were doing it in Windows.

Unfortunately, with recent versions of Wine, SDC has had some trouble installing Sins. It can fail at the point where it attempts to download sin.sdc. If this happens to you the workaround is to install an older version of Wine for the Sins install and then reinstall the current version to actually run Sins. Thanks for pointing this out, Radtoo.

To do this go to http://www.winehq.org/site/download, select your distribution, and then find the list of previous versions that are available. For Ubuntu, for example, you would select Ubuntu from the list and then click the link under "Older .deb packages," download the package, and install it.

A version of Wine known to work well with SDC and install Sins properly is 0.9.47 so I'd recommend going with that one.

Once you have version 0.9.47 installed, run SDC and install Sins of a Solar Empire exactly like you would in Windows.

Once the install is finished you can go ahead and reinstall the most recent version of Wine.

Step 4: Run Sins

Now to run Sins you can either run it from SDC or run it more directly with Wine. Depending on how you installed it, the Sins directory will be in one of two places (unless you specified a different location during instillation).

If installed from the DVD:
~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Stardock\ Games/Sins\ of\ a\ Solar\ Empire/

If installed using SDC:
~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Stardock/TotalGaming/Sins\ of\ a\ Solar\ Empire/

To run Sins, change directory to the Sins directory specified above and then run:


$ wine Sins\ of\ a\ Solar\ Empire.exe



Notes:
While the beta versions of Sins worked quite well under Wine the retail release has been plagued with crashes. While it seems to be better with Wine 0.9.55 than with previous versions I still get crashes every 20 minutes or so. Others have reported it running quite well for them, however, so your experience may vary. In any case I would recommend saving often so that you can pick up where you left off if the game crashes.

Font Size Bandaid

Currently the fonts don't display properly - they are too big and often trail off of the screen. I have partially fixed this by messing around with the .font files in the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Stardock\ Games/Sins\ of\ a\ Solar \Empire/Font folder. More specifically I adjusted the "Height" value down to a smaller number so that it would display properly.

The modified files can be downloaded here www.honorguardonline.com/sins/sinsfontfix.tar.gz. Just replace the .font files in your ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Stardock\ Games/Sins\ of\ a\ Solar \Empire/Font folder with the ones provided in the download (I would recommend making a backup of the originals first just in case, for whatever reason, you want/need to go back to the original version).

I only fixed the most grievous problems so there are still areas that need work. If anyone feels industrious enough to fix some of the others please share your results. It would be most appreciated.
technical
179,993 views 82 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him to catch fish and feed him for his life.


i am not sure if this phrase is correct this way (i am a foreigner), but i think it does apply to the whole opengl vs. directx situation.

when you use opengl, you use an industry standard and you are able to work for any company (outside the game biz) that is in need of a 3d programmer.

when you use opengl, it can be much more easy to make your games multiplatform (i am not sure but i think the ps3 and the wii use only opengl, the mac and linux do).

when you use opengl, you are independent from a single vendor (just imagine that microsoft one day demands royalities for using directx, very unlikely but the risk does exist)

directx sdk is superior to plain opengl because it offers more than just graphics libaries (sound, controls) but you can always use sdl with opengl.

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
Wine 0.9.54 here. Same no-download problem as the original author mentioned.

I guess you need to downgrade Wine to download and install SoaSE. After that at least I could, however, upgrade wine again and enjoy the game under Linux. :CONGRAT:
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
Really? I tried going back down to .52 and still had the same problem. Which version did you go down to? How did it play for you once you got it up and running? Were the fonts right? Were you able to go online?
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
I went down to 0.9.47 and then back up to 0.9.54. The fonts are too large, and there's also a few text strings that look entirely garbled up for whatever reason.


Multiplayer does not work, Singleplayer does.
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
The final release now gives me GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY errors and crashes when playing. :(

Changing the Wine registry key "VideoMemorySize" didn't work either.

That's with Wine 0.9.54 on x86_64 and SoaSE 1.01.012. It might not be a Wine/Linux specific problem, seeing how people with Windows have crashes as well.
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
hi, i have problems installing the game. the moment i try to install soase it starts to download the sin.sdc and thats it, the progress bar does not advance. i have waited an hour or so, but nothing. All i can do is close sdcentral and then it tells me that it is installing soase.

i use debian 4 etch, kde and wine 0.9.54 on x86.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
Downgrade Wine to like 0.9.47 (that's the version I tested, anyways), then the download should work.
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
Vista64 works really well for me. And besides, my XP doesn't use all of my 4G of RAM. I am of the opinion that you get Vista64 when you buy your next computer but that you do not upgrade any of your existing computers from XP.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
cool, after the downgrade it installed without any problems.

can anyone post a link to the desktop icon. wine has not created a soase.xpm
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
I got it to install and run fine but I cannot seem to actually play the game. When I try to place a structure or build anything no response. The only thing i have full control over is the camera. Anybody else get this problem?
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
I experienced the same crash that Radtoo did my first time running the retail release. After that I tried bumping down every quality setting down to its minimum and turning off just about all superfluous effects. With these settings I was able to finish a game (though a VERY short one). I'm not sure if it is the settings that fixed it or if I just got lucky. I'll have to play with it more later. But for now it is bed time.

On the plus side I got the "No Exhaust Port Found" and "Best Defense is a Good Offense" achievements in my uber-short blitz game :D
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Do you guys think just straight copy over the SoaSE folder to wine would work? Anyone tried it with latest wine 0.9.55 and 1.2 patch?
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
I restored my game from a backup archive 1.2 patched. The game 'works' but all my resolutions aren't detected, for instance my resolution is 1920x1200 but the game will only run in 1280x1024 without any AA.
In windows that works, but I guess it's a matter of figuring out where it goes wrong and then write a patch for it. Some debugging is needed.
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
The resolution detection is due to the XRandR extension that Wine uses to set the screen resolution. It will work if you change wine's driver to use XVidMode. To do this, open wine regedit or edit ~/.wine/user.reg in your favorite editor. In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver, create two new values:

"UseXRandR"="N"
"UseXVidMode"="Y"

That solved the problem for me, though I still don't have AA. I'm poking at that, but it doesn't work in WoW, either, so I'm less than hopeful.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
I am having some intermittent crashing with all video settings and effects maxed (except AA, naturally). As time allows I will keep poking at it to see if I can find any consistency or tweaks that help.

My gut tells me that the issue we're seeing is something to do with the "High" and "Highest" texture settings in effects. Back in the day, I ran into some texture memory issues with d3d-mode WoW in Cedega, and this feels similar, somehow. I'll test it as I have opportunity.
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

I am having some intermittent crashing with all video settings and effects maxed (except AA, naturally). As time allows I will keep poking at it to see if I can find any consistency or tweaks that help.

My gut tells me that the issue we're seeing is something to do with the "High" and "Highest" texture settings in effects. Back in the day, I ran into some texture memory issues with d3d-mode WoW in Cedega, and this feels similar, somehow. I'll test it as I have opportunity.


I've tried putting every setting on the lowest and turned off all extra effects. Still got the same crashes so unfortunately it looks like the problem runs deeper than that.

I find it interesting that the betas ran pretty well with the exception of online play and font rendering. What changed so drastically between beta4 and the retail release that would cause it to crash in this manner?

Here is the terminal output that I get right when it crashes. Is this similar to what everyone else is getting? I have a 7600GT running on Ubuntu 7.04. Wine 0.9.54.

fixme:d3d_surface:surface_prepare_system_memory >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY (0x505) from glBufferDataARB @ surface.c / 815
fixme:d3d_surface:IWineD3DSurfaceImpl_LockRect >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY (0x505) from glMapBufferARB @ surface.c / 960
err:module:load_builtin_dll failed to load .so lib for builtin L"winedos.dll": /usr/bin/../lib/wine/winedos.dll.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory
err:dosmem:load_winedos Could not load winedos.dll, DOS subsystem unavailable
err:module:load_builtin_dll failed to load .so lib for builtin L"DBGHELP.DLL": /usr/bin/../lib/wine/dbghelp.dll.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory
fixme:faultrep:ReportFault 0x33eed0 0x0 stub
fixme:winmm:MMDRV_Exit Closing while ll-driver open

Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
While I did some quick play testing, haven't seen any crashes yet. I believe I've solved or worked around some of the more basic issues like resolution and AA. First the resolution problem, my native screen runs at 2560x1600 which, I was able to get it to detect 1920x1200 with the registry work around posted by drukargin, but I have a better solution. I did some poking around and these developers did a very smart thing and stuck all the user configurable options in a text file, much like World of Warcraft did with their Config.wtf file.

Go to this directory:
~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
Just thought I'd try to add a little bit to this thread and thanks for all the previous posters doing most of the grunt work. One more thing, you can back out that XRandR vs XVidMode fix in your user.reg file, it works fine with XRandR if you set your resolution manually like this.


Thanks for that! IMO, it's still worth noting the XVidMode option, because I like the option to have my resolutions detected, and in general prefer the XVidMode switcher. Good to have other options available, though!

I'm still fooling around with things, and not finding much of great import to comment on. Has anyone had any success with multithreading? SoaSE is running all on one core, for me, which I'd rather it didn't.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
How often does the game crash? Can you get the game to save every couple of turns perhaps somehow?
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
For me it crashed about once every 12 minutes under Wine 0.9.54... However last night I installed a new build of Wine and it hasn't crashed yet after almost an hour and a half of play - at least not until I hit "surrender" because I had to leave for work - and even then it presented a minidump message instead of Wine crashing and burning. SDC was even able to install Sins just fine without going back down to 0.9.47 first. So hopefully the new Wine build has solved most of our crash woes. More testing is necessary to make sure that this wasn't just a fluke though.

But when naming planets and ships avoid lower case y's and upper case V's. O_o
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
Could you please report back when you have time to try it out some more :) And what about lower case Ys and upper case Vs? Some graphical errors or?
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
There is now an entry for SoaSE in WineHQ's AppDB.

I by the way am sorry for the very bad description, but it was all I could come up with. I hope someone will put in a better one! :D
Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
I had submitted it about a week ago and they finally added it today... looks like they went with your application submission though. I put in a different description and listed Ironclad Games as the vendor.

And whoever listed it as platinum... I want to know your secret! I gave it a rating of Bronze and thought that was being somewhat generous given the frequent crashes, font problem, lack of multiplayer, etc...
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
The game runs flawlessly on my Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy x86 distro. Here's the kicker...

The game won't run for me when i run the game's .exe using wine. My temporary solution is to run the setup.exe from the cd and select the top option, "Modify Available Options". After it finishes 'repairing', it automatically starts up the game and I'm able to play with no problems or freezes as of late. Been playing a few hours now. Just to note, I'm using the latest wine version. Hopefully the next update will let me play from the .exe rather than having to repair the game each time I want to play. :p Isn't such a big deal though as this crude method takes 30sec, then off to play!

Click Here for Image

Update: Just tried it on Cedega and it doesn't look like it works (at least for me). I can mount the cd and the setup begins, but it hangs at the first window and won't let me hit next.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
And whoever listed it as platinum... I want to know your secret! I gave it a rating of Bronze and thought that was being somewhat generous given the frequent crashes, font problem, lack of multiplayer, etc...


Beta3 was platinum. Current version isn't.