Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst

What works

- Installation of the official (US) game client

- Launching the game client

- Changing game settings (options menu)

- Registering your UserId and Password (main menu)

- Character selection (when using a previously created character)

- Ship, Lobby Selection, and Lobby movement

- Party selection (when joining an existing party)

- Movement and ship activities on Pioneer 2 (quest, shopping, bank, etc..)

- Transport to and from the planet surface via gate and pipes

- Movement, combat, quests, boss encounters on the surface 

- Disconnecting cleanly from the server

What does not

Critically, typing

- Cannot finish character creation because you can't type a name

- Cannot get to Pioneer 2 because you can't create a party in the lobby (can't type a party name)

- Cannot (text) chat or interact with the server (via commands) because you cannot type in the chat window

This is due to a long outstanding issue with Wine's IME implementation - see bug #27293 for more details.

Workarounds

What was not tested

- Patch server download (dependent on server implementation)

- Anything past the Forest level (including final boss battle)

- Episode IV

- Lobby games

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Additional Notes: No crashes at all! This test was run with the staging version of Wine 2.0 on Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS 64-bit. The game client was manually patched to 1.24.3 (US) and then to 1.25.10-Teth. The game client connected to Tethealla 1.43 on the LAN via a patched client. To get around bug #27293 I used a pre-existing character and joined an existing party in the lobby. Tested on a notebook with an AMD APU (E series) using the Gallium 0.04 open source graphics driver. The console output (while running the game) was identical to the output when running under the unmodified 1.24.3 client: -snip- fixme:imm:ImeHandleNotify WM_IME_NOTIFY:IMN_SETCOMPOSITIONWINDOW fixme:imm:NotifyIME IMC_SETCANDIDATEPOS fixme:imm:ImeHandleNotify WM_IME_NOTIFY:IMN_SETCANDIDATEPOS fixme:d3d:wined3d_swapchain_set_gamma_ramp Ignoring flags 0x1. fixme:imm:ImmGetDescriptionW (0x4090409, 0xacf3e0, 255): semi stub fixme:imm:ImmGetDescriptionW (0x4090409, 0xacf3e0, 255): semi stub fixme:imm:ImmGetDescriptionW (0x4090409, 0xacf3e0, 255): semi stub .. fixme:imm:ImmGetOpenStatus (0x1462b8): semi-stub .. fixme:imm:ImmReleaseContext (0x3006a, 0x1462b8): stub -snip- Performance (for me at least) was poor. Whenever you press a key on the keyboard (notably for movement and atacks) Wine spams the following line: fixme:imm:ImmGetDescriptionW (0x4090409, 0xacf3e0, 255): semi stub​ and the framerate drops to single digits. If you have a powerful gaming rig you might be able to offset that performance hit but you really shouldn't need it to play a game from 2004/2005. As a comparison this same notebook can run the game under Windows at full speed @ 1024x768 with the highest settings and no frameskip. I'm leaving the rating at Bronze due to how critically bug #27293 (the IME issue) affects this game.

Pretty simple:

In the command line, run "winetricks d3dx9_43" and "winetricks dotnet462" without quotes.

Then install ephinea's installer and run it. Everything should work fine execpt the keyboard issue.