Guide to playing TS under Wine on GNU/Linux, + managing mods the easy way! Options

[snow93]

Well seeing as I mentioned it on the topic I created yesterday, I thought I outght to write a firendly guide to running TS with Wine (and also, importantly, making it not too hard to work with).

First load up winecfg, and make sure you've auto-detected all your drives. If you want to make things easier, you can execute:

CODE

$ ln -s ~/.wine/drive_c ~/c

So you can easily access your pseudo-C-drive by going into the "c" subdirectory in your home directory.

Nothing special to say about installing TS: just enter your CD folder (probably /cdrom, or /media/cdrom, or /media/TSGDI01 or whatever).

So now you have TS isntalled in c/Westwood/SUN.

To make it run at an acceptable speed, you need to do the following:

- Load up regedit.
- Go to HKEY_CURENT_USER -> Software -> Wine
- If it doesn't already exist, create the "key" (looks like a folder) called "AppDefaults".
- Inside AppDefaults create another key caleld "Game.exe"
- Inside *that*, make one called "Direct3D"
- In Direct3D, create two String Values:
- DirectDrawRenderer --- with a value of "opengl"
- RenderTargetLockMode --- with a value of "readtex"

Now edit SUN.INI and put AllowHiResModes=true in the Video section, and anything else you want to change.

Now update TS to version 2.03 - in the SUN directory, do the following:

CODE

$ wget ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/tiberiansun/updates/TS203EN.EXE && wine ./TS203EN.EXE

That's vanilla TS now sorted, now onto managing your mods.

I've tried Stu's Mod Manager, and it works fairly well, but it's not a "perfect" solution -- a much better way of ensuring your mods don't get confused is to take advantage of Unix's "symlinks" -- these are not like Windows shortcut files -- the application doesnt' notice that the file is a symlink, and treats it as just like any other file. This way you can make a copy of your SUN directory for each mod withotu using up any extra disk space.

What you need to do is install a handy symlink-making program called "lns". Execute the following:

CODE

$ wget http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/utils/lns.tar.gz
$ tar xvf lns.tar.gz
$ cd lns
$ sudo make install
<put in your password>
(alternatively:
$ su
<put in your root password>
$ make install
)

Now go to your Westwood directory (.wine/drive_c/Westwood)
and create a symlinked copy of your TS directory tree: (using TS Retro as an example)

CODE

$ lns -r TS TSR
$ cd TSR
$ wget http://www.habotsteel.com/tumsun/1.21FULL.zip
$ unzip 1.21FULL.zip

Now your installation of TS Retro will not get in the way of normal TS or any other mods(!)

Have fun.

(if you are confused (it's badly written, so you probably will be) just ask and I will help!)

This post has been edited by snow93: Jun 11 2009, 11:39 AM

[Orac]

Commenting ;HighResMode= stopped me from getting as far as the main menu.
But if I remove either string the game runs. With either one it runs extremely slowly, but with both I cannot start a game, and get that odd screen, above, in the screenshot.
[EDIT: With neither string, ie: both deleted, TS runs slowly. It seems, however, to fluctuate in speed between very slow and normal.
I cannot shed any light on the matter, but these strings seem to be effecting the game badly when combined.]
[EDIT2: It seems that mouse movement is the cause of the slowdown. I notice that this has been reported at WineHQ]

It runs with either but not both, and while running does so very slowly. Odd, isn't it.
I've tested each of things I've changed, each string and the SUN.INI, but still seem unable to run TS.

Still, better than before. It wouldn't start previous to this.

This post has been edited by Orac: Jun 13 2009, 09:00 PM