The Sims 2

What works

Installer worked just fine without any issue at all.

Sims 2 Body Shop is Entirely Functional and Works fine (But models Do not render correctly)

Sims 2 Launcher Works. Takes a very long while to Load and Show up Though seems slightly Glitchy (Graphically) : Image

What does not

Family Thumbnails Appear broken. Sim Models Do not Render Properly. 

(Even with the workaround on The game) Sims 2 Body Shop still has Improper Rendering of Models. 

The in-game TV does not work correctly. Shows a black screen on top of it instead of video files. But i do not know if this might work or not on other systems.

According to Sims 2 On Lutris's GitHub it also says:

Changing resolution on public lots may result in a black screen. Avoid doing that and simply change it in the town mode. Icons above sim�s head (like the one you get for a new friend) cause temporary polygon explosion

I cannot Confirm the 1st One as i did not test that but it is easily avoidable.

But i also Cannot confirm the 2nd one as i did not test that either. but other icons like the positive/negative relationship impact icons did not cause a polygon explosion that i know of.

Workarounds

To fix these problems. you need to add a startup.cheat file in My Documents/EA Games/Sims 2/Config that turns on shaders for the game: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tannisroot/installer-fixes/master/userstartup.cheat or Manually create the file and insert 

boolprop useshaders true

After which you'll need to Download these two Mods: https://github.com/tannisroot/installer-fixes/raw/master/sims2_fixes.tar.xz (insert in My Documents\EA Games\Sims 2\Downloads  (Manually Create the folder and drop .package files there) (These fixes have been Found on Sims 2 Known issues section on Lutris on GitHub: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki/Game:-The-Sims-2 Be aware that after inserting these fixes. it will not work on any Neighborhood that you've already loaded. and Resetting the Neighborhoods will make things work correctly after inserting these mods. After that models did appear Correctly and the game ran fine. but i was not sure how to fix the black screen TV.

What was not tested

i did not Test Going Downtown or other locations.

Or did not test some of the in-game cut scenes. 

Sims 2 Package installer was not Tested. 

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

Overall. after those fixes the game did run pretty well. i was even able to install another expansion pack on top of it and it worked aswell. but these issues can be very annoying for a new user. not to mention some of these bugs i am not sure how to solve or if there is a workaround for them yet.

This game does not run under regular Wine. The game crashes with D3DERR_INVALIDCALL because The Sims 2 requests 1024 vertex shader constants, but Wine has a hardcoded limit of 256. Direct3D 9 normally supports up to 8192, using hardware shaders first (where available), followed by software emulation. Software emulation is not currently supported in Wine.

Wine Staging helps improve the situation, but may result in an unstable gameplay as reflected in test reports.

Below documents some third party solutions, which cannot be submitted as test reports here.

1. DXVK

If you have a Vulkan-enabled graphic card, install dxvk through Winetricks and enjoy a fully playable experience without much (if any) glitches specific to Wine. DXVK is a Direct3D to Vulkan translation layer.

Note that Steam's Proton includes DXVK, which may work too.

2. Lutris

Lutris is a platform for installing games in a unified interface on Linux, an installer is available for this game.

3. Manually patching Wine

There is an old repository that documents patches and glitches for an older (now unsupported) version of Wine:

https://github.com/lah7/sims2-wine-patches

While still far from perfect and prone to unexpected crashes (dependent on hardware), it is possible to run The Sims 2 under Wine.

The infamous D3DERR_INVALIDCALL error is due to the fact Wine is hardcoded to supply 256 vertex shaders instead of 1024 that The Sims 2 demands. By patching this constraint, as well as providing "dummy" code for unimplemented shader interfaces, enables the game to play to surprising results.

Acknowledgements

A thank you goes to swswine for initially discovering the game's major unimplemented undocumented shader interface and for writing the patch to demonstrate this in bug report 8051. Further contributors include Robert Walker, Alexandr Oleynikov and Paul Gofman.

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8051

Graphical Glitches Inevitable!

While the patch enables the game to play fairly well (dependant on hardware), there may be issues including:

• Family thumbnails rendering red "t-pose" Sims.
• Some skin tones look lighter on the character's head than the rest of their body.
• Icons above sim head (like when a Sim gains a new friend) can cause a temporary polygon explosion.
• Changing resolution mid game in household mode can sometimes result in a black screen.

Do not submit test reports for patched versions!

Please do not submit test results here as this is a hack to get the game running. Continue to submit tests for vanilla Wine or wine-staging (as long as this is explicitly stated), but it seems unlikely we'll see improvements from "Garbage" for regular Wine until the missing undocumented shader interfaces are implemented.