Retail version with the offical 1.5 update and no-cd fix. Also the "Best of PC" version.
Old test results
The test results for this version are very old, and as such they may not represent the current state of Wine. Please consider submitting a new test report.
Selected Test Results (selected in 'Test Results' table below)
What works
Installation
Game works fine - but starting it is a bit difficult
What does not
The autorun launcher doesn't work
What was not tested
Multiplayer
Additional Comments
The game didn't start - it displayed the LucasArt splash screen and then silently exited. Only with WINEDEBUG=warn+all could I see what was wrong (see forum post for details).
Hardware is AMD Athlon X4 620, nVidia Geforce 9800
HOWTO get Empire at war running under wine on Ubuntu 7.10
The standard wine from the ubuntu repositories did not let me run EAW, However it will work (and I've reproduced this on different machines) and these are the steps I used to do it with thanks to everyone who has contributed some portion of these instructions.
You will be installing dependencies and recompiling wine - don't worry it's not to difficult and the game runs really well under linux now (at least ubuntu today)
Step 1 - Preparing wine
perform the following instructions, some of them will take a while to run so maybe have a drink ready eta roughly an hour - depending on how fast your machine is and the bandwidth you have. These are the commands - do them in order!!!
Ok, if they all completed then you are good to go, if not try running
sudo apt-get update
and starting again. You are ready to move onto the next step.
Step 2 - compiling wine
First you have to get ubuntu ready to compile wine
sudo apt-get install flex
sudo apt-get install bison
installs the appropriate tools then extract your wine archive to an appropriate directory (or folder)
bunzip2 -c wine-0.9.??.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
change to that directory and compile wine
cd wine-0.9.??
./tools/wineinstall
This will take some time so do as the instructions say - go rent a video or make a meal. Finally you will need to configure wine
winecfg
if this command dumps you back to the login then you have a problem with your X configuration, I've noticed this with nvidia cards, should be ok under ubuntu.
Step 3 - Prepare wine for EAW
Now prepare wine for EAW, add the following to the registry entries
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectX]
"InstalledVersion"="hex:00,00,00,09,00,00,00,00"
"Version"="4.09.00.0904"
You may also need to find a dxd9??.dll and put it in the .wine/drive_c/system32 folder but I can't see this as a necessary step for the install of wine I am examining YMMV. Get a DirectX upgrade while you still can and use cabextract to extract the required files - you may find a version on the game you are trying to install.
Step 4 - Install EAW
Perhaps the easiest part of all, load the EAW disk (I used the Best of PC version which is on a DVD and has the latest patches), if you need to install patches for an older version do it after the game is installed.
Oh, and install an Icon on you desktop, it will come in handy.
Goto gamecopyworld.com and thank the guys there for there work getting around a broken copy protection system, get the NOCD fix for the game and also a linux version of unrar to extract it.
For some reason the copy protection mechanism that Empire at war
uses broken under linux. Perhaps the maintainers of wine will sort this
out but I think that the copy protection is a broken idea in the first
place - I don't mean you should pirate the game (I have a couple of
copies) it's just until it is you will not be able to play over the
internet games (yet to try out local network multiplayer games) using the NOCD patch, you could mention it to the people at Electronic Arts that you want to play games under linux (I did and they basically told me).
Unrar the files and copy them to this directory
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/LucasArts/Star Wars Empire at War/GameData
Copy the following lines into a text file and make that text file an executable
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/LucasArts/Star\ Wars\ Empire\ at\ War/GameData/
wine sweaw.exe
I called it LaunchEAW
chmod +x LaunchEAW
then edit the icon and point it to the script. I've tried this on a couple of machines and it works well. Full graphics, full detail runs good
You may also want to put sliders on the top and bottom menu bars to get them out of the way otherwise the machine won't pass the scroll up/down events onto EAW (which is bad when you have to frag an Imperial star destroyer in a hurry).
Enjoy!
HOWTO get EAW running under fedora
The standard install of wine from the fedora repositories do not seem to work for this game so you will need to build wine. These are the steps I used to do it with thanks to everyone who has
contributed some portion of these instructions (borrowed from ubuntu). YMMV
This may not work for all video card YMMV, I was using a Nvidia 8600gt with the proprietary drivers, I'll give it a bash with an ATI card when I can. Fortunately one of the requirements for the proprietary nvidia drivers is also required for wine so if you have one of these cards and have configured X properly it should work good.
Step 1 - Preparing Fedora
Through the package manager install the X development environment and check you /var/log/Xlog.0.log to ensure the 3D drivers are working correctly. You will also need the development system to be installed. If you have not got xorg-x11-server-sdk-1.3.0.0.fc7.x86_64 installed (check your Package manager) you will need to install this AND re-install your nvidia drivers *BEFORE* you proceed.
Step 2 - Prepare wine
Pretty standard but here we go, extract your wine archive to an appropriate directory (or folder)
bunzip2 -c wine-0.9.??.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
change to that directory and compile wine
cd wine-0.9.??
./tools/wineinstall
This will take some time so do as the
instructions say - go rent a video or make a meal. Finally you will
need to configure wine
winecfg
if this
command dumps you back to the login then you have a problem with your X
configuration, I've noticed this with nvidia cards especially under fedora. If you break your X config even once (ie the box doesn't boot to X for some reason) symbolic links will break, checksums on the nvidia drivers will change and you will get very annoyed trying to work out what is going on. Save your sanity go back to the nvidia drivers and do a sanity check - if it passes the problem is in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (run nvidia-xconfig). If the sanity check fails reinstall the drivers (which implies the kernel source). If you don't understand what I am talking about here you should be using Ubuntu, which while friendlier is not as gunty as the Fedora boxes (Personal experience - no need for a distro war here please).
Step 3 - Prepare wine for EAW
Now prepare wine for EAW, add the following to the registry entries
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectX]
"InstalledVersion"="hex:00,00,00,09,00,00,00,00"
"Version"="4.09.00.0904"
You may also need to
find a dxd9??.dll and put it in the .wine/drive_c/system32 folder but I
can't see this as a necessary step for the install of wine I am
examining YMMV. Get a DirectX upgrade while you still can and use
cabextract to extract the required files - you may find a version on
the game you are trying to install.
Step 4 - Install EAW
Perhaps
the easiest part of all, load the EAW disk (I used the Best of PC
version which is on a DVD and has the latest patches), if you need to
install patches for an older version do it after the game is installed.
Oh, and install an Icon on you desktop, it will come in handy.
Goto
gamecopyworld.com and thank the guys there for there work getting
around a broken copy protection system, get the NOCD fix for the game
and also a linux version of unrar to extract it.
For some reason the copy protection
mechanism that Empire at war
uses broken under linux. Perhaps the maintainers of wine will sort this
out but I think that the copy protection is a broken idea in the first
place - I don't mean you should pirate the game (I have a couple of
copies) it's just until it is you will not be able to play over the
internet games (yet to try out local network multiplayer games) using
the NOCD patch, you could mention it to the people at Electronic Arts
that you want to play games under linux (I did and they basically told
me).
Unrar the files and copy them to this directory
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/LucasArts/Star Wars Empire at War/GameData
Copy the following lines into a text file and make that text file an executable
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/LucasArts/Star\ Wars\ Empire\ at\ War/GameData/
wine sweaw.exe
I called it LaunchEAW
chmod +x LaunchEAW
then
edit the icon and point it to the script.
You
may also want to put sliders on the top and bottom menu bars to get
them out of the way otherwise the machine won't pass the scroll up/down
events onto EAW (which is bad when you have to frag an Imperial star
destroyer in a hurry).
Once you get this working under fedora you will not believe how good the game play is - I'm on 1280x1024 full detail and it runs very soothly :-)
Enjoy!
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. WineHQ is not responsible for what they say.
How to start the game when it wasn't installed in English
by Arthur Huillet on Saturday April 21st 2012, 7:33
My Wine installation uses the french locale, and for some reason the game doesn't properly start when it was installed that way. It will display the splash screen and then exit immediately without even an error message.
WINEDEBUG=warn+all helps you see what's wrong.
In this case, I had several files in the Data/ directory that the game was looking for with a _english name. Sure enough, those files didn't exist, but they did with _french. A symbolic link solved the issue.
It works!!!
by WiHer on Friday August 14th 2009, 13:12
No problems with sound or graph. Installation failed for first time but after that everything went smooth (had to reboot and install it on 'clean' system). I played all lessons and first mission. Didn't try multi-player.
Game version 1.0 updated to 1.5 (put update into EAW folder before run). I used fixed exe. My info: ubuntu 9.04, wine 1.1.27 + winetricks.
Have fun with game, I will:)
sound card preventing gamplay?
by DonTechJuan on Saturday August 8th 2009, 1:25
I got the game installed and the launch menu opens but when I hit play it says it cannot detect the sound card that its either missing or disabled. I know my sound card is fine because it works with everything else. when it gives me the sound card message it asks if i want to continue anyway. I hit yes and the launcher disappears and nothing happens. what do I need to do to fix this?
Sound hick-up?
by Xavier Vachon on Sunday June 15th 2008, 22:22
Wine RC5 on Hardy Heron and PlayOnLinux
The game seems to work well, but when I load it, the sound hooks up and it feels like it is hicking up. It does not prevent the game from working, but it's annoying as hell!! Any tips on how to fix that?
