Wine 0.9.57!

Wine 0.9.57 was released today, with the following main changes:

• Support for multiple OpenGL pixel formats.
• Improved support for color profiles.
• Many window management fixes.
• Better fullscreen support.
• Lots of bug fixes.

Binary packages are in the process of being built and it may take a few days for them to appear, but the source is available now. You can find out more about this release in the announcement. Check out our download page for packages for your distribution.

How-to: Heroes of Might and Magic 5 in Wine

Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is a strategy game released by UbiSoft (R.I.P 3DO).

First of all, insert the disc/mount the iso and start a terminal and go to the disc directory:

cd /media/cdrom (in my case)

Then you start the install program by writing:

Wine Setup.exe

The game requires D3dx9_25.dll to run (place in .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 and you might have to add it as native via winecfg)

The intro move will crash Heroes 5, therefore you must remove the two first Item blocks from the file Video/intro.xml.

Then you should be ready to run the program by directing to the games directory, and run:

wine H5_Game.exe in the terminal!



Notes:
To run the game in higher resolutions, you must edit the registry.
To do this, you must start "Regedit" via the terminal.
The go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine -> Direct3D and the following string value:

Name: VideoMemorySize Data: 640 (in my case, you might have more or less)

How-to: Trackmania United on Wine!

Trackmania United is a fun game with cars/themes from the previous Trackmania games, gathered in one game.

First of all, insert the disc/mount the iso and start a terminal and go to the disc directory:

cd /media/cdrom (in my case)

Then you start the install program by writing:

Wine TmUnitedSetup.exe

After you have installed the game, you must find a no-dvd patch/crack (I'm obviously not going to direct you to one). The game also requires D3dx9_30.dll + D3dx9_30.dll to run (place in .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 and add them as natives via winecfg)

Then you should be ready to run the program by directing to the games directory, and run:

wine TmUnitedLauncher.exe in the terminal!

Benchmark:
Very High Settings @ 1024 x 768 (virtual window) on following system
Ubuntu 7.10
Wine 0.9.56 with 3D Mark patch
Core 2 Duo 2,33 ghz, 8800 GTS with 169.09 drivers, 2 gb RAM.

Average FPS: 30 fps



Notes:
Some more advanced settings will only work if you have installed the 3DMark patch.
Bloom will only result in white lines on the screen.
Motion Blur doesn't work.

How-to: Wine + 3DMark patch

With the 3D Mark patch, the games will recognize your systems pixelshader and Directx levels, allowing you to play more games, and turn up the graphical settings on many games.

What you need:
3d Mark patch and the Wine source

Patching:
Extract the source files and patch the source by first going to the directory you extracted the source.

cd /path/to/wine/source/directory

When you are in that directory, you use the following command to patch the source.

patch -p1 < /path/to/patch/file

Now it should be patched! Then you simply must compile Wine (not going to talk about that here).

Got problems with black textures?
Open up a terminal and write "regedit" to start Windows Regedit. Go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine -> Direct3D (may not exist, then it's just to create) and change/create the following value:

Name: OffscreenRenderingMode Data: fbo

That should do it!