No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way

What works

* Running the demo's .EXE file extracts files into directory (I chose the default directory presented which, after extraction, is: "~/.wine/drive_c/NOLF2Demo" without quotes)

* Running installer program manually at the command line via "~/.wine/drive_c/NOLF2Demo$ wine Setup.exe" without quotes

* Completing the installation; Choosing to read the Readme.txt following installation via checking a window box option, Choosing to have a desktop shortcut placed on my desktop via checking a window box option

* Display of the Readme.txt following installation

* Placement of desktop shortcut icon on my KDE 3.5.4 desktop

* Starting the demo from the desktop shortcut icon

* Starting the demo manually via "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Fox/No One Lives Forever 2 (Official Demo)$ wine NOLF2.exe" without quotes at the command line

* The demo starts with a yellow colored window appearing at the same time a little audio song plays with a brief tune. The yellow window contains the game logo and company logos, as well as five red buttons which read: play, display, options, uninstall, quit.

* Audio when user moves his mouse pointer cursor over any of the red buttons in the yellow menu

* Yellow colored window's red buttons' actions when clicked; PLAY (but brings up a missing cshell.dll error window (see what doesn't work), DISPLAY (brings up a Display Settings red and yellow window with the following empty columns: Resolutions, Displays; and the following column with one detail listed: Renderers, and in this Renderers column is listed: DX8 Renderer), OPTIONS (Advanced Options menu which has several items which may be selected and deselected), and QUIT (which exits the demo)

* Manually removing files since all efforts to uninstall failed (see what doesn't work); manually removing desktop shortcut icon

What does not

~ Starting the game with a default install (nothing other than the NOLF2 demo installed in WINE) from the yellow window will bring up a dialog box which reads, "Missing shell DLL cshell.dll." and when OK is clicked, the window (along with the demo) exits. The file cshell.dll does exist following the installation of the NOLF2 demo, in "~/.wine/drive_c/windows/temp", without quotes, and starting the NOLF2 demo via the command line gives the following error "err:module:import_dll Library MSVCIRT.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\windows\\temp\\cshell.dll") not found"

~ Starting the game after an install and the file msvcirt.dll manually added to the NOLF2 install directory or the windows/temp directory doesn't show the error window mentioned above, and instead loads a black screen with a window which gives the following error in a dialog window, "Error initializing the renderer. In order to play No One Lives Forever 2 (Official Demo) you must have DirectX 8.1 installed and a video card that supports hardware TnL." I even tried starting with the -opengl option but that didn't make a difference.

~ Minimizing the yellow window will minimize the yellow window into the KDE panel but with the following problem(s): when the minimized application is selected in the panel it brings the yellow window back up as a small yellow square without any of the original features (red buttons, game logo, company logos, etc.) visible. Left and right clicking on this small yellow window does nothing, neither does pressing the mouse wheel button or rotating it up and down. Pressing SPACEBAR on the little yellow window will minimize it again, pressing ENTER will bring up detail settings configuration menu. Other than that, I didn't try other keys to see what would work, except for ESC when the mouse pointer cursor was over the little yellow window which made it exit.

~ Gameplay; see above for details (re: error messages)

~ Uninstalling the demo via the red uninstall button in yellow menu; clicking it does seem to start a process of uninstall, but it pops up an error message in a window which reads, "An installation support file could not be installed. (0x80000ffff)" and exits

~ Uninstalling the demo via "wine uninstaller", without quotes; an error message pops up in a window which reads, "An installation support file could not be installed. (0x80000ffff)" and exits

Workarounds

What was not tested

- Gameplay; DirectX 8.1 required message window pops up and when you press OK the demo exits (see what doesn't work above for more details on this)

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Demo runs as far as the yellow options menu with options which may be selected and configured somewhat but the game itself fails to run, so yes it starts but no the game isn't playable because of the dx8.1 error.

If you get a popup "Missing shell DLL cshell.dll" and a console message """err:module:import_dll Library MSVCIRT.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\windows\\temp\\cshell.dll") not found""" you need to copy a msvcirt.dll to the gamedirectory.

It is part of ms-windows and can be found at C:/WINDOWS/system32/msvcirt.dll