Total Annihilation plus Core Contingency plus Battle Tactics pl 1.0-3.1c patch
Selected Test Results (selected in 'Test Results' table below)
What works
Single player campaign and map editor. I was running it at 1920 x 1080 resolution. Looked good and ran well.
What does not
Music. The folder is there, but the in game music option is greyed out, and no music plays.
There is an issue with the Direct X. On start up I get a warning that my version of Direct X may not be compatible with the game, and that I should install the version from the CD, which is Direct X 5. There is a problem that occurs when moving to the next mission, or if I reload my game mid mission. When the map loads, only a small portion is viewable, and everything outside of this is cut off. I tried installing a Direct X version using winetricks, but this did not help.
What was not tested
Multiplayer, skirmish, expansions.
Additional Comments
This is the GOG version of the game.
Not sure I installed the Direct X correctly. Not too experienced yet with Wine.
DirectPlay
is not implemented natively within wine, but it works using the native
directplay dlls. There is a section about multiplayer configuration
below.
Installation and configuration
Wine version:
If
you're not sure which version of wine to use, use 1.1.27, otherwise you
could try using the version of wine that comes with your distribution,
and then, if that doesn't seem to work, you could try 1.1.27.
Wine basic configuration
- In winecfg, set "windows version" to "Windows 95"
Installation:
Install TA original from cd
- run winefile
- in winefile, click on the drive icon corresponding to your cd, for example it could be "D:"
- in winefile, double-click SETUP.EXE
- at the end you will likely get an error "cannot open readme.txt"
- you can ignore this error (fixed in wine 1.1.27)
Install Core Contingency
- the bad news is that you can't install core contingency using
setup.exe, because it will complain that TA isn't installed yet (fixed in 1.1.27)
- you can install via the installer SETUP.EXE on the cd, or by simply
copying the .CXX files from the DATA directory of the Core Contingency
cd into the directory where you installed TA original to
- it is recommended to just copy the files across, otherwise the 1.0-3.1c patch may not install correctly
Install Battle Tactics
- Just copy the .CXX files and .UFO files across as from the cd into
the directory where you installed ta to, since this ensures that the
1.0-3.1c patch will install correctly.
Install 1.0-3.1c patch
- this should be installed last
- it will ask you for the location for where you installed TA original, so give it the location and this will work fine ( correctly detects location automatically in 1.1.27 )
Wine configuration for single player play:
You may find that TA runs out of the box, if so: good!
If
wine/ta complains that it can't find an appropriate resolution -
perhaps you are running on a 800x480 screen - then you could try the
following, in winecfg:
- In the 'Applications', create a new application setting for TotalA.exe
- this is important, because otherwise winecfg itself will run in the
virtual desktop you're going to create, and it is not always easy to
use winecfg in a virtual desktop
- select the "TotalA.exe" application setting
- switch to the 'graphics' tab and:
- select 'Allow DirectX apps to stop mouse leaving the window'
- unselect 'Allow the window manager to decorate windows'
- unselect 'Allow the window manager to control windows'
- select 'Emulate a virtual desktop', and try putting the resolution of your screen, which, strangely, seems to work great!
Note
that the dll over-rides need to be global to your wine prefix,
otherwise dplaysvr.exe will use the wine directplay dlls instead, which
won't work. (integrated into winetricks)
You need to install the Microsoft DirectPlay dlls, which you can do by doing the following:
You
might consider running ta from a new wine prefix, to avoid possible
interactions with other wine configurations/programs. See 'wine
prefixes' section below.
You
may have scim installed or similar. If this is the cause, you may get
the keyboard working by typing in front of wine "XMODIFIERS=''":
XMODIFIERS='' wine /my/ta/directory/TotalA.exe
Sound
These
instructions were tested with the sound set to 'alsa' in winecfg, and
with pulseaudio entirely uninstalled from the machine. I'm not
recommending you uninstall pulseaudio, but if the sound doesn't work
for you, then you might consider doing this.
If game won't start at all
- the game probably won't run without the 1.0-3.1c patch applied
-
if your screen won't run at 640x480, you could try creating a virtual
desktop, see 'Wine configuration for single player play' above
-
note that these instructions were tested on wine 1.1.26 and wine
1.1.27, so if the game still won't run you might consider installing
wine 1.1.27.
- if the game still won't run, please add a
comment and / or bug report, providing as much information as possible
on hardware, operating system, packages installed, screen hardware,
console trace, and so on.
Other configuration
Virtual cds
You can mount .iso images of the cd, for example on a netbook which doesn't have a cd player, but you won't get any music.
One
might think that a .iso image is an image of an entire cd, but
actually, a .iso image of a TA cd is just an image of the data track of
the cd. The music is stored in the subsequent audio tracks. The
original TA cds are mixed-mode cds.
To get sound using a
virtual cd, it is not sufficient to create and mount a .iso image: you
need to get an image of the entire cd, for example, by creating a
cue/bin image.
Once you have a cue/bin image, you can load it
as a virtual cd from within linux using cdemu. If you're not sure
which version of cdemu to use, or if the one packaged with your
distribution doesn't seem to work correctly, you might consider getting
the 1.2.0/1.2.1 version - you may need to build from source - which
works just fine.
You don't need to "mount" the virtual cd
using "mount": it is enough to "cdemu load" the cd, and wine should
automatically see the virtual cd. You can check that the audio tracks
are visible by opening RhythmBox or similar. The first track should be
about 28 minutes or so: it is the data track that contains TA itself.
If you're not sure whether to use --bus=system or --bus=session , --bus=session seems to work just fine.
Wine prefixes
You might consider creating a new wine prefix to keep everything
neat. By using a new prefix, you can keep your ta wine configuration
separate from your other wine program configurations. You don't have
to; things will most likely work without doing this, but they might
break more easily, or something might not work and you're not sure why.
To use a wine prefix, simply, whenever using wine or winecfg, instead of typing just "wine" or "winecfg", type:
WINEPREFIX=/home/user/wineta wine
WINEPREFIX=/home/user/wineta winecfg
This will create a new wine configuration directory at /home/user/wineta
You
can delete the directory /home/user/wineta/drive_c/windows/gecko , if
it exists, which takes up 30M of space, and is not needed.
FAQ
How well does it run?
It runs great! Very fluid, even on an ancient netbook with a 600megahertz Celeron.
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. WineHQ is not responsible for what they say.
how to dismiss the directx warn dialog?
by fpemud on Sunday February 24th 2013, 22:36
"On start up I get a warning that my version of Direct X may not be compatible with the game"
