Free Realms

What works

Successfully tested Free Realms client version 1.216.349.301.1109.275340 with Wine 1.1.29 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard using the system's provided XQuartz 2.3.4 implementation of X11.  FireFox 3.5 was the browser used to update and launch the game.

All components of the FreeRealms web site displayed and updated correctly, in-game data streaming, chat, grouping, mission mini-games, and trading card games also worked.  The game's storefront worked correctly, as did all music and sound.

The game did function in both fullscreen and windowed modes (though changing modes had some problems.)

What does not

The game constantly crashed after the loading screen with the "fbo" and "pbuffer" OffscreenRenderingMode in the Wine registry.  Setting this to "backbuffer" was the only way the game worked.

Water does not seem to render at all (though the waterfalls do), the mouse cursor has some glitches (it renders as a block), and the lower left quarter of the screen has a graphics glitch which is reflected in my screenshot submission...the whole game screen is overlaid in a very transparent fashion 3 different ways in the lower left portion of the screen.

Changing between windowed to full screen modes in game did not seem to work correctly; though the settings change was reflected in the game's .ini file after attempting to change modes.

Workarounds

What was not tested

I did not try installing the game via the web site, I used the small Free Realms installer to kick start the process.  I'm not sure if it will install directly from the site.

Some of the mini-games (ie: chess, checkers, and racing) and a few game zones were not tested yet.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I used the "dlls/crypt32/chain.c" hack that was posted here. The following were also installed using the "winetricks" script (I'm not sure if all are necessary): firefox3 flash d3dx9 vcrun2005 vcrun2005sp1 fontsmooth-rgb I did not have to do anything regarding S3TC texture compression.

Setup Wine

1. Make sure you are using at least version 1.1.30 of Wine

2. Go to Terminal and run regedit to get to the Wine registry editor.

3. On the left expand the tree at HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Wine.

4. If you do not have a key called Direct3D right click the Wine folder and choose New Key then give it the name Direct3D.

5. Right click the Direct3D key and choose to add New String Value and give it the name OffscreenRenderingMode

6. Double click the new String value and in the Value box use backbuffer.

7. You also need to use winetricks to setup additional programs under wine. Go to  http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks  to see how to get winetricks onto your computer

8. Once you have winetricks go to a terminal and to the same directory where you have winetricks installed and enter:

sh winetricks d3dx9 vcrun2005

9. Follow any prompts from the installation of these packages and wait till they are completed.

Setup Firefox

1. You can go to www.mozilla.com and make sure that you download FIrefox 3.5 but the WINDOWS version.

2. Run the Installer with wine and it should install no problem.

3. Run the Windows Firefox (Applications > Wine > Programs > Mozilla Firefox) and go to http://www.adobe.com/go/EN_US-H-GET-FLASH  and follow directions to install Flash Player as if you were in Windows.

Get into Free Realms

1. Go to the Free Realms site, and log in as normal.

2. You might get a prompt from Firefox to allow the site to install an addon. Accept this as normal and it will restart Firefox when done.

3. You should now see the game client downloading and installing as normal.

4. Once downloaded and installed click the "Play Now" button and it will open Free Realms.

5. If you use KDE (eg Kubuntu), you may notice that you cannot run continuously. Open System Settings, go to the Keyboard applet and disable Keyboard Repeat while you play and all will be well.

 Exiting Free Realms

Please be aware that there seems to be a bug with Free Realms that once you exit the process doesn't exit properly and you need to go to the System Monitor (Ctrl+Esc in KDE) and kill the process manually.

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NOTE:

Turn off all desktop effects. In Kubuntu hold Alt+Shift and press F12. In Ubuntu go to System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects tab and choose "None".

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Also, if you would like to get more attention for this game click the "Vote" link in the App description at the top to add more votes and we may get more Wine Developer interest to get this game running.