American McGee's Alice

What works

Everything

What does not

Game audio crackles occasionally during NPC dialogue

Workarounds

What was not tested

Nothing

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

The current how-to notes on Alice's WineHQ page still apply in 2018.  It takes a little tinkering to get the resolution set properly, and sometimes applying changes to the audio settings in-game will reset the game resolution.  I've been unable to find a fix for the crackling audio, but it isn't a major issue.  The game works well otherwise.

2015-01-31 Admin note: the instructions below are extremely old and may not apply to current Wine. Follow at your own risk.

This guide is written using Wine version 0.9.40.

1. Install Wine
2. Configure Wine. I tested using the ALSA driver.
3. Download the demo, then save the file to disk, for example to
   /tmp/alice_demo_beta7a.exe
4. Run the demo's installer. In a terminal enter
   wine /tmp/alice_demo_beta7a.exe
5. When an install window appears, click "Unzip", then wait the the installaiton to finish. When the demo is done installing it automatically starts the game.
6. In a terminal enter
   echo "seta in_mouse -1" >> "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/EA GAMES/American McGee's Alice Demo/demo/config.cfg"
   This will disable use of "Direct Input" for mouse events, which allows the game know the absolute position of the mouse, which avoids a wine bug. If you skip this step, depending on your Wine version, Alice won't be able to turn clockwise or counter-clockwise more than one rotation (360°). For example, Alice wouldn't be able to circle strafe. Or, the game won't know the positon of the mouse and will, for example, leave the mouse pointing to the middle of the screen even if you keep moving the mouse to the right. This is very noticeable when the game starts and you try to move the mouse around the main menu screen.
7. Run the game. One at a time, enter in a terminal each of the below commands, until one of them runs the game successfully. In the future, to start the game again, re-run the command that worked.
   1. cd "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/EA GAMES/American McGee's Alice Demo/" && wine "alice.exe"
      As of Wine version 0.9.40, the first time you run this command, Wine might try many different video modes. The video mode scan takes up to 7 minutes, during which time your display will go black and flicker often.
   2. xrandr -s 640x480 ; cd "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/EA GAMES/American McGee's Alice Demo/" && wine "alice.exe" '+set r_mode 3'
      Once the game has started, you can use change the game's display resolution. In the game's main menu click "Settings", then click "Video (1)", then click the left or right arrows under "Resolution" to set the new game resolution. When done click the "Apply" button.
   3. cd "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/EA GAMES/American McGee's Alice Demo/" && wine explorer /desktop=Alice,1024x768 "alice.exe"
      If you use this command, you may wish to configure your window manager to not put boarders on the window so the game can use your entire screen. Note: you may have to change "1024x768" to whichever resolution you wish to play the game. To find your current display resolution, enter in a terminal
      xdpyinfo | grep 'dimensions:'
8. If you trouble with sound, configure Wine to use the OSS driver.
9. Optional: If you have a wide screen display, follow the instructions at this link.

Custom resolutions

(The following info was extracted from a user comment made in January, 2014.)

If you wish to use a native widescreen resolution you can follow these steps suggested by MarcusRaven

1. Enable the console in the Game Options menu.
2. Open said console.
3. Type the following commands, pressing enter after each one:

seta r_customwidth #
seta r_custonheight #
seta r_mode -1
vid_restart

The game will remember the custom resolution so you only have to do it once.

1. From the game's main menu, select "Settings", then select "Game Options" (number 4 on the head).
2. At the bottom of the settings page enable "Console".
3. While playing, show the game console by pressing the "~" key.
4. In the console enter "cg_cameradist 45".
5. Press the "~" key again to hide the console again.
6. To return to the normal perspective, in the game console enter "cg_cameradist 128"