Grim Fandango

What works

Can install.

What does not

When running, the screen goes black and after waiting 10 to 20 seconds, a giant sized Glottis head appears at the bottom of the screen and it soon becomes apparent that the display has "hyperzoomed".  It proceeds into the intro video, also hyperzoomed and unwatchable, and attempting to escape to the menu crashes the game entirely.

Workarounds

What was not tested

nothing

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I tried following the "instructions to get grim fandango working", didn't work. I tried changing my native resolution from max at the top (1920x1080) all the way down to 640x480, no help there. I tried ignoring the instructions and just doing an "all defaults" install, and tried both patched and unpatched versions of the game. All paths lead to identical behaviour and identical crashing for me.

See also Grim Fandango Launcher utility.

This guide will help you install Grim Fandango and play it without errors.

1. Use Gmount iso to mount the first cdrom image, or put the first CD into the cd drive and verify it's correctly mounted.
2. Run full Installation in C:\Grim (make sure winecfg's D: drive is set to type 'cdrom' and points to the mount point, else the installer will fail)
3. Patch to 1.01 by downloading the gfupd101.exe patch, and invoke it with "wine start /unix gfupd101.exe"
4. Use winecfg to turn off "Graphics> Allow the window manager to decorate the windows" for the grimfandango.exe executable.
5. Download the new "Grim Fandango Launcher" (search for it in google), and unzip it into "C:\Grim".
6. Rename the launcher executable to GrimLauncher.exe
7. Run the launcher
8. Go to Options and enable "Run Grim From Hard Drive". It will ask you to insert the grim disk. If you are using ISO images use Gmount to switch cdrom images. Do not choose to over-write existing files, instead click "no" when asked.
9. Choose whether run it windowed or full screen and exit the game as soon as possible (it will hang after a while if you try to play it now, run.sh script fixes the issue).
10. Close the launcher.
11. Now you can run Grim Fandango using "run.sh" command. Have fun!

This is the run.sh command. Open a text editor, paste the following text, save it and add execution permissions to the file:

#!/bin/bash
wine GRIMFANDANGO.EXE &

# Get list of Grim Fandango threads. And don't forget to remove the grep ID from the list!
GRIM_THREADS=`ps -LFfea | grep GRIMFANDANGO.EXE | grep -Ev 'grep' | awk '{printf($4); printf(" ")}'`

# Wait until the 5 threads are created
THREAD_COUNT=`echo $GRIM_THREADS | wc -w`
while [ $THREAD_COUNT -lt 5 ]
do
echo "Waiting for threads to be ready. Hit Ctrl-C if it hangs here after closing the game."
sleep 1
GRIM_THREADS=`ps -LFfea | grep GRIMFANDANGO.EXE | grep -Ev 'grep' | awk '{printf($4); printf(" ")}'`
THREAD_COUNT=`echo $GRIM_THREADS | wc -w`
done

# The 5 Grim Fandango threads are ready. Set affinity!!!
for CURRENT_THREAD in $GRIM_THREADS
do
# Set affinity to the first system processor
echo "Setting thread " $CURRENT_THREAD " affinity!"
taskset -pc 0 $CURRENT_THREAD
done

echo "READY!!!"

Notes:
You have to use run.sh to play the game. You CAN'T use the launcher utility. Only use the launcher utility to change from windowed to full screen mode if it works for you, then close the game and use the run.sh script to play it as always.



If the run.sh script didn't work for you, then use these steps:

- Invoke "wine taskmgr" - this shows Wine TaskManager window.
- Choose Task | Run from the menu and point it to the Launcher. It seems that spaces in filename doesn't work here so I have to install Grim to c:\grim folder and rename the launcher
- Go to options and enable Run From HD. Do not choose to over-write existing files, instead click "no" when asked. Use Gmount to switch cdrom images.
- Run the game windowed
- Switch to Tasks in TaskManager, right-click the grimfandango.exe process and choose "Set Affinity..."
- Uncheck all the CPUs but one and click OK.
- If this step is done fast enough - the game runs perfectly fine, at least I played an hour or so without sound stuttering and subsequent hangs.