Armed Assault on Linux through Wine

[arigram 0]

First I would like to make it clear that this is not meant to be a whining request to make ArmA compatible with Linux.

After all, this is a job for Wine developers and not the ArmA team.

I have been trying to get ArmA to work with Wine on Ubuntu Linux for a few months now, unsuccessfully.

Since Wine has reached V1.0 Release Candidate, I decided to post this request for assistance, hopefully to make the game work as it is, or patch Wine, maybe even before V1.0 if the obstacle is a minor one.

Quite a few modern 3D games work well or with a bit tweaking with Wine, such as Half Life 2 and Call of Duty 4, which means that its not impossible to get ArmA to run as well.

With Ubuntu 8.04 i386 and Wine 1.0rc1 I can get these to work:

- Installation of Armed Assault 1.04 European.

- Installation of Queen's Gambit.

- Patching to 1.08.

- Patching to 1.14.

- Passing Securom protection correctly.

- Loading the Menu screen, with all options functioning.

What does not work though, is the actual important stuff:

- The 3D output, including the streaming background of the menu screen, the Armory and the game itself.

- Sound. Not exactly silent, it gives out garbled beeps and peeps.

When run through the console, Wine complains for quite a few undefined not working DX9 stubs. Including relevant DLLs from a Windows installation in Wine's win32 doesn't help. Neither do any options in the WineCFG, including window manager handling and sound emulation. I did not try the library substitution as I am not familiar with it.

I have filed a report in Wine AppDB twice.

Can anyone help to get ArmA to work in Wine?

[maddogx 13]

I tried this too for a while on Ubuntu 7.10, but unsuccessfully. There seem to be a variety of problems, including something called "read-file-scattering" (or similar) not working properly in Wine.

If you get any replies or find any solutions, I would like to hear them, as this topic interests me too.

[ShrubMiK 0]

Has anyone tried Cedega?

[maddogx 13]

Has anyone tried Cedega?

Yeah, I bought a three month license, but it worked even worse than Wine. Install worked but the game wouldn't even start.

[jerryhopper 286]

I tried this too for a while on Ubuntu 7.10, but unsuccessfully. There seem to be a variety of problems, including something called "read-file-scattering" (or similar) not working properly in Wine.

If you get any replies or find any solutions, I would like to hear them, as this topic interests me too.

There is a patch that fixes the "read-file-scattering" in wine.

Despite that, i didnt managed to get the game running as server.

i dont give up easily, but from my past attempts i learned that ArmA on linux with Wine is a dead end.

[Serclaes 0]

Has anyone tried Cedega?

Yeah, I bought a three month license, but it worked even worse than Wine. Install worked but the game wouldn't even start.

Cedega is based on an old wine version.

If arma and all the dev tools can be run with wine, i would switch to Linux for my desktop pc. I'd love to get rid of all my microsoft products.

[kmossco 9]

Has anyone tried Cedega?

Yeah, I bought a three month license, but it worked even worse than Wine. Install worked but the game wouldn't even start.

Cedega is based on an old wine version.

If arma and all the dev tools can be run with wine, i would switch to Linux for my desktop pc. I'd love to get rid of all my microsoft products.

Me too. But still, long way to go until we get ArmA to be properly played in Linux.

[maddogx 13]

Has anyone tried this with the latest Wine 1.0 RC3 and ArmA 1.14?

If not, it could be worth installing the latest Ubuntu version in a virtual machine and testing it.

[DirkGent 0]

You might want to take a look at the Wine AppDB and contribute to the testing there also:

Wine AppDB Armed Assault

Vote for the bugs so they get more attention if you experience them. Maybe some of the developers can fix the current issue(s)...

[Deadfast 43]

Yeah guys, vote for the game.

The more votes it gets the bigger possibility that somebody will look at it and try to fix it

[baddo 0]

It's not worth it.

If it could be run on wine, then it would be slower than when running on Windows. I do think that ArmA runs slowly-enough on Windows...  

Such an open-source project such as the Wine is going to seriously struggle to keep up with what is required to run games like ArmA. I wouldn't expect them to do much about this, it's unrealistic.

Yes I tried it too. Already Operation Flashpoint has problems when running it on Wine which are not acceptable in my opinion. It's a lot to ask after that that Armed Assault should work.

[DirkGent 0]

First of all: Wine Myths

It might be slower but it might also work fine. We can not tell until we get it running...

For my part I want to leave the Windows platform as soon as possible and the only thing left for my part is that I want to be able to run Armed Assault.

On-topic: Why not try the new version of Wine with ARMA? It was released 27th of June.

The more people testing and the more information we send to the developers the better...

[baddo 0]

First of all: Wine Myths

It might be slower but it might also work fine. We can not tell until we get it running...

In my opinion the fact that Operation Flashpoint (a DirectX 8 game) runs both slower and erraneously on Wine compared to how it runs on Windows XP, is a good indication that Armed Assault (a DirectX 9 game) is going to have similar problems but even more so as it uses newer technology which is not available on Wine.

There is no need to bust any myths. It is my experience which tells me that games run faster on Windows XP than on Wine on Linux. And let's take into notice that both Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault can not be run on Wine without errors, the latter even doesn't get to the 'playing' part at all.

Of course the salesman is trying to claim that the product is better than that, but we tried the product and saw how well it works. It doesn't work, move on and spend your time better.

[DirkGent 0]

Well it might be so. But this thread is about getting it running on Wine. Not if we should or should not try.

If it runs slower than on Windows - fine - but lets try getting it working just for the fun of it.

[klavan 0]

Good luck with this attempt, but personally I don't think a solution will pop-up anyway, at least in the near future.

Oh, and about OpFlash running under WINE here's my experience: link.

[DirkGent 0]

What is your experience in regards to speed etc compared to Windows?

[baddo 0]

I wish you good luck as well for getting Armed Assault to work on Wine.

I just think that the Wine developers have the ball and the development is just so slow that it is unrealistic to expect them to implement all functionality needed to run ArmA anytime soon. It is going to take years at least is my bet.

But please do keep trying, do not stop trying even if I sound pessimistic (realistic). I am afraid that you would have to become a Wine programmer if you really want to solve the problems.

Thumbs up.

[klavan 0]

What is your experience in regards to speed etc compared to Windows?

Overall performance was very good as I wrote at the end of AppDB submission.

It was impossible for me to compare performance in terms of FPS and so on between myowndistro+WINE and XP as the second were already removed from my PC at that time.

It's a pity: I had tested all the modding tools (both for OFP and ArmA) at the same time and apparently they ran fine.

Anyway I agree with Baddo: if ArmA it's going to run under WINE one day It will be too late I guess.

[arigram 0]

Pessimism is not realism.

If you want to be realistic, then you have to investigate each application and game and how they work in Wine, that is per case and not have a general negative view.

That's why there is the Wine AppDB and the bug reporting tools.

Many games play in Wine. Some even better than in Windows.

General statements such as "only old games work" or "DirectX 9 games don't" are wrong and misleading.

Half Life 2, War of Warcraft, Prey and even Call of Duty 4 work, some with some tweaking others with normal installation. Some older games I have don't work, such as Risk II, but others do, such as Mafia and IL-2 Sturmovic.

The reason why one game might work and another might, its complicated and has to be dealt separately and not as a general failure of Wine or the DirectX 9 implementation. It could a copy protection problem, a specific library call or even a small bug. One game could not work up to a certain Wine release where a small fix has been made, or in reverse, there are often regressions where an application will stop working or cause problems.

So, its not the case of giving up on Wine in general and hold the negative opinion that it will never work. If you do think like that then there is no need for you to even bother thinking about it.

Since each game has be dealt with one by one in Wine, I think that a certain critical mass of support for Armed Assault in Wine could really make it happen.

After all, it could well be just a small bug that causes the 3D output not to work and not the whole DX3D9 implementation. A little time ago, Armed Assault in Wine didn't pass through the Securom protection and now it does. So, it HAS improved.

Don't be pessimistic. Be realistic. ArmA CAN be made to work in Wine like other modern games have.

[klavan 0]

@arigram

Are you talkin' to me?

I'm not pessimistic and I don't give up with WINE: actually it's installed in my OS and I use it with regularity to play some games.

But it's true that in many cases it takes a relatively great amount of time for some games to run fine with it (and I agree with you about the reasons). The point is that ArmA2 is going to be released within one year I guess, that's why I said that day might be too late for ArmA.

Oh and btw, talking about gaming on GNU/Linux, I think it's worth to take a look at PlayOnLinux project.

IMHO it's very promising.

[baddo 0]

arigram, I am not entirely sure if you have understood my posts in this thread. But I give you the benefit of the doubt... it might as well be my fault for not being clear-enough about what I want to say. Or maybe I don't understand. But anyways.

There is functionality missing from Wine which is required to make ArmA work on it. That means major trouble to you if you want to run ArmA on Wine. This has a negative tone, and when I said 'pessimistic' (realistic) I meant that it is realistic, but to some other people than me I might sound 'pessimistic'. I hope this clears what I meant. I don't think that I am pessimistic, I think I am being realistic. Really.

There is functionality missing from Wine to run Operation Flashpoint correctly... if they can't have functionality in place to run a game from 2001, how about a much newer game which uses newer programming libraries? It's only going to be worse, as has been proved to be the case with ArmA on Wine.

It's realistic (to you I'm pessimistic...) to say that there are major problems and that it is going to take a lot of time to improve Wine so that ArmA runs on it. If you are not going to do the research and programming work by yourself soon, then you can expect a long time until ArmA works on Wine. I can not see what is wrong with this statement. It is in my opinion a realistic statement.

I said that the ball is on the Wine developers. You can become one if you wish. If you are not going to become one and start coding it to make it work with ArmA, then the next best thing in my opinion is to move on like I said earlier and not waste time on it. I know I am not going to become a Wine developer, so I decided to move on and forget about it as I have better things to do than to try and run a buggy and a performance-wise very demanding game on a totally unsupported platform.

[DirkGent 0]

Thank you Baddo for you input. I understand what you are saying but as I have said before - this is for solving the issue. Not if, but how. Maybe if this get fixed - it can help Arma2 to work when released.

So, I have started a new thread on the Wine forum. Maybe we can continue the discussion on how to get things running and what we need to do there?

Armed Assault - no 3d rendered

[baddo 0]

Good initiative. I do support you in what you are doing.

I don't know if I can help with that. I'll keep it in mind if I get back to testing Wine later.

[DirkGent 0]

Thank you. Now we only need more votes to get the devs attention!

[dotted 0]

Baddo: Because there is more demand for getting the newer libraries working, the more work will put into that. Back in the OFP days getting DirectX "ported" to wine wasnt a priority as many other features was missing. And now when there is some focus on getting games to work, it will be the current generation (DirectX 9) in focus, not DX8, 7 or whatever.

You cannot say that because OFP doesnt work, ArmA wont either - or even say its an indication. CoD4 is newer than ArmA, yet it is working and that is because there is more demand for it.