Physicus - Save the World with Science

What works

Nearly everything works.  Game installs and runs.  All "laptop" lessons work, including interactive ones.  Game state can be saved and loaded correctly.

What does not

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1347 causes two problems, both of which can be worked around.

First, when installing QuickTime the entire desktop is overdrawn with black and not refreshed.  The interface is still usable and QuickTime does install correctly.

Second, at one point in the game, a QuickTime animation is embedded in a TV screen with VCR controls.  When the animation loads up, the entire screen gets overwritten with black, so the control to press "PLAY" is not visible.  Even when stepping away from the TV screen, the frame which includes the laptop is not redrawn.   The workaround is to hover the mouse over the lower left corner of the screen until the green "ON" button of the laptop lights up.  When that is pressed twice, the screen will refresh.

A minor problem, which may be specific to my machine, is that the audio sometimes jitters.  I did find that downloading QuickTime 7.1.5 instead of the versions of QuickTime (3 & 4) included with Physicus, did seem to make playing the introductory movie a tad smoother.

Workarounds

What was not tested

I have only solved the first few puzzles so far.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I expect that once Bug #1347 (direct draw screen corruption) is closed, this application's rating can be raised to Platinum (runs flawlessly out of the box). http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1347