You must use a version of Wine that is 1.0.1 or newer. Versions of Wine before 1.1.13 are known to exhibit mouse-lag bug. There are a few really old versions that may work, but there's no reason not to try the newest tested version.
WARNING: Following tips are useful mainly for older Wine versions. Applying them is not nescessary.
You can run winecfg and change few parameters.
To avoid slow fading in/out use "emulation a virtual desktop", or renice wine process later.
ALSA soundsystem may randomly crash wine with fallout games. Try choise OSS (works fine) or ARts (not tested).
Installation
Just mount CD with game and type wine /mnt/cdrom/SETUP.EXE. There no bugs, really. Select disk, path and type of installation (small, normal, full). Recommended choice full installation, but others variants also works.
Optionally you can also apply crack for fallout2.exe. The crack is known to work with multiple versions of Fallout 2 but just in case make a safety copy of fallout2.exe:
Compile it with gcc fallout2patcher.c -o fallout2patcher
Copy fallout2patcher to your Fallout2 installation directory
Execute it with ./fallout2patcher
Playing
Run wine fallout2.exe and have fun with greatest postapocalyptic game.
To make the game go fullscreen open winecfg and uncheck the box for emulating a desktop.
Fanmade mods and patches
From prev. mainainer:
If you are going to install the 1.05 fanmade patch, which I recommend, you must first install the official 1.02 patch. Then, you're going to need to do some file renaming. Extract the 1.05 patch seperately, and then browse your Fallout 2 folder. Notice that the filenames in the Fallout 2 folder aren't exactly the same as those in the patch - the patch folder has different cases for some. Simply rename the ones in the fanmade patch to make them look like those in your Fallout 2 folder. Then overwrite them.
If you do it wrong, you will get "unable to save game" errors after starting the game. If you do it right, this won't happen.
If you get an error like "can't find/load text" check your .cfg file and make sure your cdrom is mounted
If the fade effects on the game menus etc. are slow, a possible fix is to run fallout2.exe at a lower priority than wineserver, e.g. wineserver -k; nice -n 5 wineserver -p; nice -n 20 wine fallout2.exe. For best results, try different nice values for wineserver.
If your are experiencing mouse lag, install some more recent Wine version.
the high-res patch may need vcrun6 (winetricks vcrun6)
if your ingame cursor is sticking to an edge of the screen or is otherwise constrained try winecfg > add entry for FALLOUT2.EXE > under the Graphics tab un-tick 'Allow the window manager to control the windows'
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. WineHQ is not responsible for what they say.
GOG version
by evilny0 on Saturday December 29th 2012, 13:21
I lost more than 1h messing with configuration options... before finding a thread on codeweaver forums suggesting not to use GOG launcher. Problem solved, working with no special configuration settings after this small change.
Issue with mouse
by Robert J. Armstrong on Monday June 11th 2012, 14:21
Hello! I'm having an issue here. When I try to play the game, regardless of patch version, my mouse isn't acting quite right. This isn't the mouse simply moving slowly; the mouse is stuck to the lower-right corner of the window. I've tried it with every possible permutation of the options under the Graphics menu, but I'm still not getting any relief. Any ideas, folks?
On Ubuntu/Mint you have to use Compiz. I tried to play it on different versions on Wine without Compiz and the game was really, really slow. Totally unplayable. When I've turned Compiz on, everything works fine!
If the blackisle video freezes
by Ortanam Ulappo on Monday November 14th 2011, 22:45
I have experienced the 2nd starting video is freezing every time. Somehow I found the solution by killing pulseaudio server:
pulseaudio -k
Still sound works.
Renaming every file to lower case by entering the Fallout directory and typing
find my_root_dir -depth -exec rename 's/(.*)\/([^\/]*)/$1\/\L$2/' {} \;
didnt solve my problems with missing texts ("error" written instead), audio passages (beep instead) or not visitable places like "military base" or a quarter of klamath (north-west of center/starting quarter)
mouse lag fix
by Calman on Thursday January 27th 2011, 12:42
to remove the mouse lag in game, you can try to run it in a separate x-server with 16 bit color depth.
For example: startx wine fallout2.exe -: 1 -depth 16
It helped me.
"Stand by" / Loading Error
by Chris on Wednesday March 31st 2010, 14:28
For the Guys who cant Start the Game. I have Mac OS 10.6.3 and Wine 1.1.35 from Mike Kronenberg.
I installed Fallout 2 (US), Patched to 1.02. And it closes itself every time in the Stand by Screen. I installed Patch 1.05 and it works to the Point after you've been introduced by the Elder and the Game trys to load the Gamescreen and crashes.
The Problem is you cant Rename the Files from 1.05 cause only after the First Start Fallout 2 unpacks a Archive to /Data.
To make a long story short (for my case):
Fallout 2 starts only with Patch 1.05 but doesn't run cause of Case Sensivity in Linux/Unix.
No launch Fallout 2
by Cristiano Faria on Monday September 7th 2009, 16:10
Hello to everyone who wrote or contributed to this excellent article.
Use the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10. My version of Wine is 1.1.28.
I do not know what may be happening, follow the steps of installing wine, completed with the packages indicated by the Wine HQ and tried to install Fallout 2 ...
The error: "Could not find/load text fonts"
For wine HQ I have to change the config of wine for Win 98 and verify that the cd estah mounted. Everything has been done but still the same error.
Do not be a problem on my copy (which I downloaded from the net and recorded a CDR / W?
The Wine HQ provides a script to build a crack. Is this necessary?
Can anyone help me? I am a big fan of the game but do not know much about Linux Ubuntu yet.
Type winecfg
Set Windows version to Win2000.
Go to the libraries tab and add ddraw as 'native/built-in'.
Go the audio tab uncheck everything and checkmark Alsa Driver.
Click apply and ok.
This is for Fallout 1:
Copy/Install Fallout 1 to Linux (using Windows or CX Games).
Install the following updates:
Fallout Patch 1.2 ENG TeamX (install this first)
Fallout Patch 1.3.4 ENG TeamX (install this second)
When running the game, make sure you cd /home/blah/gamedirectory
Then: wine game.exe
The mouse and animations should be smooth and fast in both games; as good as, possibly better than, Windows. If it's sluggish you did something wrong. :)
Asks for CD everytime I try to start fallout2.exe
by John Frough on Monday August 25th 2008, 17:58
I've done everything mentioned at least twice. I'm using wine 1.1.3. I've updated the game to 1.02 via official patch, patched with no-cd and still asks for a CD. The CD is actually mounted via AcetoneISO2. I've tried running the game under 2k and XP environments. Any suggestions?
Workaround for sluggish mouse cursor
by Mikael Åkersund on Saturday February 9th 2008, 9:04
Install a small utility called "sfall" (slightly modified ddraw.dll), set the dll override for "ddraw" to "(native,builtin)" in 'winecfg' (Libraries tab-> add override) and the mouse cursor behaves nicely again. Other benefits of sfall includes custom resolutions, scale filters, tweaks for encounter rate, world map travel time, removal of the 13 year game time limit.
Note: Several of the player-made mods and patches already include the sfall ddraw.dll.
RE: dosbox? by Ryan L. on
Monday October 27th 2008, 13:00
RE: dosbox? by Dot on
Saturday December 19th 2009, 12:43
Alright, fixed it
by Dabljuh on Wednesday March 1st 2006, 6:53
1. The fade effect problem can be fixed with running "renice 10 `pgrep wineserver`" - most of the time
2. The game starts fine from the CD, (autorun.exe) but not fallout2.exe on the HDD.
The paths above might vary depending on the location of nice, wine, and fallout2.exe.
It seems like the performance problem is related to the wine server running at the same priority as the wine client and windows program. By using nice, it is possible to lower the priority of the wine client and windows program below the priority of the wine server.
