Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

HOWTO - Running HoI2 on GNU/Linux

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
unmerged(61061)

unmerged(61061)

Sergeant
Sep 21, 2006
50
0
I. Preface
I'm a longtime fan of the games from Paradox, beginning back with Europa Universalis. Nowadays, though, I'm mostly spending my game time on Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday Armageddon. Sometime last year, I got sick of the Windows operating system. I just couldn't stand the viruses, the malware, the spyware, the crashes, the BoD's.. And to make it worse, Microsoft released Vista.
Now, I moved to a different OS, GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux, which is actually wrong, Linux is just the kernel of the GNU operating system). The main problem was, my favorite game, HoI2, is for Windows. But then, I found out about WINE, a nice piece of software which makes you able to run certain Windows applications. And with it, I were, and still am, able to enjoy my favorite game in the OS I love. :)

II. Why am I doing this?
I am doing this so that people can enjoy HoI2 in a better OS-environment than Windows. I believe open source is the way to go, and stay away from proprietary products, such as the Windows family of operating systems. I also believe Windows systems are technically inferior to a Unix-like system.

III. Who is this for?
This is for users who just got into GNU/Linux, but still play HoI2 on Windows. I hope this guide will help you migrate fully.

IV. Preparations
First of all, make sure you have a fully functional and updated system. I'm currently running a Arch Linux-system, updated daily.
After your system is up to day, install WINE via your distributions repository, or download and compile it from the source (www.winehq.org). This is done differently on different distributions, on Arch Linux, I just run the following as root in the command line:

Code: 
pacman -S wine

On for an example, on Ubuntu, you would probably do:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install wine

As you see, this varies by distribution. Consult your distro's documentation.

V. Installing HoI2
First of all, grab your HoI2-disc and slam it into the cd-drive (maybe you shouldn't slam it though..). If you run a popular desktop distro, your disc should mount automatically. If not, you may have to mount it manually.

Anyways, use your terminal to navigate to your disc, usually under /mnt/cdrom or /media/cdrom. Use the ls command to view the content, and you should see something like a SETUP.EXE. To execute it, run the following command:

Code: 
wine SETUP.EXE

If this is your first time running WINE, it will create a .wine-directory in your home-folder, in which WINE simulates a Windows partition. When installing the game to, let's say, C:\HoI2, in the installer, it will install in ~/.wine/drive_c/HoI2 on your machine. Hope this is not hard to understand :)
After you've successfully installed the game, you may want to patch it. Download the patches from the Paradox-site and run them using the same command like before:

Code: 
wine /path/to/file.exe

The game and patches should install ok.

VI. Running the game
Running the game is really simple. Just navigate to the installed folder, for an example ~/.wine/drive_c/HoI2, and do:

Code: 
wine HOI2.EXE

The game should now run :)

VII. Comments
This has been tested on both my machines running Arch Linux and openSUSE and should work fine. If you have any problems, feel free to ask for help! I hope this may help people!

Have a nice day,

/kuninobu
 
uifiddle said:
Hello I have downloaded Cedega frontend and got this:
http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb/games/view.mhtml?game_id=4277

So running HOI dd under GNU/Linux is supposed to be support by Cedega. But I lost the game engine, do you have any idea about this?

wine or cedega, which one is better? :confused:
Click to expand...

In order to use Cedega, you need both the client, and the game engine. I belive both comes with a fee? So I would recommend Wine, because Cedega is built ontop of Wine, so why don't get the original? And besides, Wine is free (free as in both free speech and free beer :))
 
hoi da 1.1
Fedora 8
wine

Only the video at the very beginning of the game shown.
Failed to escalate to the game directly, no response to the keyboard stroke
After the video, the screen fade into black, with nothing followed.
I have to ctrl alt bksp to respawn the gui. Help~
 
uifiddle said:
hoi da 1.1
Fedora 8
wine

Only the video at the very beginning of the game shown.
Failed to escalate to the game directly, no response to the keyboard stroke
After the video, the screen fade into black, with nothing followed.
I have to ctrl alt bksp to respawn the gui. Help~
Click to expand...

Which DE do you use? I have had a similar experience in Openbox, I just either Alt+TAB until I get control of the window playing the video, or I just click on it and it focuses. After that, I get the loading screen. If that does not work, try to backup the movie files somewhere else and then delete the original files from the avi-folder. Does that help?

If the game does not crash, I don't think there is a problem with Wine, it may be your configuration. If what I said does not help, I can look for some other solutions. Reply as soon as you can! :)

Also, what videocard are you running? Have you updated to the latest drivers, preferably the proprietary ones, as open-source drivers for ATI and nvidia are not that very good..

EDIT: If this does not work, add my msn: kuninobu88@hotmail.com, and we can see if we can get to a solution :)
 
kuninobu said:
Which DE do you use? I have had a similar experience in Openbox, I just either Alt+TAB until I get control of the window playing the video, or I just click on it and it focuses. After that, I get the loading screen. If that does not work, try to backup the movie files somewhere else and then delete the original files from the avi-folder. Does that help?

If the game does not crash, I don't think there is a problem with Wine, it may be your configuration. If what I said does not help, I can look for some other solutions. Reply as soon as you can! :)

Also, what videocard are you running? Have you updated to the latest drivers, preferably the proprietary ones, as open-source drivers for ATI and nvidia are not that very good..

EDIT: If this does not work, add my msn: kuninobu88@hotmail.com, and we can see if we can get to a solution :)
Click to expand...

It's very kind of you, I have added you though my live account, we both use pidgin I guess?

My video card is Nvidia 7300 GT I downloaded every update from official website then compiled into kernel. My Nvidia driver version is 171.04

My xorg.conf is

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
Load "extmod"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Samsung SyncMaster"
HorizSync 30.0 - 81.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 7300 GT"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "0"
Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

and I have shut down the compiz-fusion.
I've tried Wine configuration.
 
uifiddle said:
what is DE?
Click to expand...

DE = Desktop Environment, I presume you are using either GNOME or KDE?

xorg.conf seems fine for what I can see, nvidia is in there, composite is not which is good. Does the video drivers work fine otherwise? Can you render 3D in native Linux-apps? There is some good stuff here for installing drivers easy on Fedora:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#nvidia

So I take it none of my advices work?

To compare our winecfgs, here is my settings:

Applications tab:
Windows Version: Windows XP (for default settings)

Libraries-tab:
Default i.e no changes

Graphics-tab:
Checked: Allow DirectX apps to stop the mouse from leaving the window, Allow window manager to control the windows
Unchecked: Emulate a virtual desktop

Vertex Shader Support: Hardware
Checked: Allow Pixel Shader
Screen resolution on default.

Audio-tab:
Sound driver: ALSA

My system is:
AMD X2 6000+, 2048MB RAM, GeForce 8800GTS, 500GB-SATA,
Arch Linux , Kernel 2.6.23-ARCH

Works like a charm. Tested on the same machine on openSUSE and Ubuntu I believe, as well as Arch Linux. Also tested on my weak laptop on Arch Linux, slow to start but it works after a couple of minutes.

Try to emulate a virtual desktop and see if you can focus the app.
 
uifiddle said:
hoi da 1.1
Fedora 8
wine

Only the video at the very beginning of the game shown.
Failed to escalate to the game directly, no response to the keyboard stroke
After the video, the screen fade into black, with nothing followed.
I have to ctrl alt bksp to respawn the gui. Help~
Click to expand...



Have you renamed avi folder to avi.old?
 
kuninobu said:

IV. Preparations
First of all, make sure you have a fully functional and updated system. I'm currently running a Arch Linux-system, updated daily.
After your system is up to day, install WINE via your distributions repository, or download and compile it from the source (www.winehq.org). This is done differently on different distributions, on Arch Linux, I just run the following as root in the command line:

Code: 
pacman -S wine

On for an example, on Ubuntu, you would probably do:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install wine


/kuninobu
Click to expand...


Great, a new Howto :)

For innstalling wine see Wine Binary Downloads
 
Many thanks.
My DE is default GNOME.
I renamed the avi folder then I am able to see the start game interface, after an expected file missing box. My winecfgs is the same one as yours.

My system is Intel E6550 2048 RAM Geforce 7300GT, 320GB-SATA
Fedora, Kernel 2.6.23

BTW yours is really a good one. Enjoy it~

There's still 2 bugs.
1. I got only SFX in the game, with no music, although music volume had been set to 99, and I can play these mp3 without starting the game.
2. After a surrender, the pause key no longer works, the only way to pause the game is click the time bar, that's terrible.

The game is not as stable as its original "counterpart", but It's good enough.

Have you install some mods with wine?
Is it as easy as replace the original data files with mod files?
 
Which WINE version are you using? With 0.9.54 the music played fine. I haven't tried with the latest WINE version.

Have you tried OSS instead of ALSA?

Do you remember the name off the expected file you miss?
 
Gaute65 said:
Which WINE version are you using? With 0.9.54 the music played fine. I haven't tried with the latest WINE version.

Have you tried OSS instead of ALSA?

Do you remember the name off the expected file you miss?
Click to expand...

I use the latest version of wine. I checked OSS box, with ALSA box.
The game program failed to load the .bik video files, it's an expected result, since I have renamed the avi folder.
I
 
uifiddle said:
Many thanks.
My DE is default GNOME.
I renamed the avi folder then I am able to see the start game interface, after an expected file missing box. My winecfgs is the same one as yours.

My system is Intel E6550 2048 RAM Geforce 7300GT, 320GB-SATA
Fedora, Kernel 2.6.23

BTW yours is really a good one. Enjoy it~
ual
There's still 2 bugs.
1. I got only SFX in the game, with no music, although music volume had been set to 99, and I can play these mp3 without starting the game.
2. After a surrender, the pause key no longer works, the only way to pause the game is click the time bar, that's terrible.

The game is not as stable as its original "counterpart", but It's good enough.

Have you install some mods with wine?
Is it as easy as replace the original data files with mod files?
Click to expand...

I actually only play mods, not the vanilla, and I don't get any music in 1914, but I do get music MDS2, and in Vanilla. Haven't tried TRP yet, just wiped my installation to install Gentoo (which doesn't work btw, I think I made something wrong). If I get bored with just SFX I usually start up XMMS and play some ambient or something :)

If I can get Gentoo working, I'll see how well HoI2 runs in that distro, otherwise if either I can't get Gentoo working or can't get HoI2 working, I'm going to try out the latest FreeBSD-release. If no luck there, I'll go back to good ol' fashioned Arch Linux ;)
 
Well, I couldn't fix my problem, so I started thinking outside the box. Wine isn't the only option for playing HoI2 in Linux, as I'm sure a lot of you already knew, but I never considered trying them.

Despite of this, I downloaded VirtualBox and started fiddling with it. I turned my house upside down looking for my Windows XP Home Edition CD, which I used to set up a virtual machine.

I then installed the Guest Additions, making graphics better and performance smoother, and proceeded to installing Hearts of Iron 2, the game I've waited so long to play :rolleyes:

Well, it turned out all right. Performance is smooth, better than playing it on wine, and loading is faster.

I just thought this could help others, VirtualBox is open source, and you can (I believe) download Windows XP and try it out for 60 days or something (or was that only with Microsoft's Virtual PC software?).

Hope this information helps ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back