MechWarrior 4: Vengeance

What works

• everything single player related
  

What does not

• nothing
  

Workarounds

What was not tested

• multiplayer (are servers for mw4 vengeance still online?)
  

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Howto: - create an empty wine prefix - use winetricks to install a few things: "winetricks vcrun2005 directx9 directplay quartz" - install MW4 Vengeance - patch it with the official patch (it's an self-extracting zip archive, after unpacking go into the folder, you unpacked it to and run the executable from there) - get a nocd crack from somewhere - create a file "options.ini" inside the game folder containing [graphics options] VideoDriverIndex=0 DetailTexture=true MultiTexture=true LightMaps=true Culturals=true Footsteps=true MissionMusic=true NoBlend=false AntiAlias=false VertexLighting=true SimpleLighting=false MipBias=0 ShadowMode=1 fontsmall=2 fontmedium=2 fontlarge=2 fontlarge2=2 fontlarge3=2 screenwidth=1280 screenheight=1024 bitdepth=32 FancyWater=true MovieTextures=true MaxLights=8 Compositing=3 EffectLOD=0.000000 LOD=-25000.000000 LoadRadius=4 HideSky=false [sound options] LowEndSound=false Radius=1.000000 hardwaremixing=false [special commands] KillGame=false AutoTorsoCenter=2 HudDamageMode=false HudTargetDamageMode=false [server] AllowDecalTransfer=0 [joystick] BiThrottleCenter=0.300000 BiThrottleLow=0.250000 BiThrottleHigh=0.060000 OneThrottleCenter=0.300000 OneThrottleHigh=0.060000 OneWayThrottle=false [msr spectator] testMSR=helloMSRSpectator allowHudNameDisplay=1 allowHudChatDisplay=1 overShoulderHeroOffset_x=4.500000 overShoulderHeroOffset_y=1.000000 overShoulderHeroOffset_z=-10.000000 overShoulderEnemyOffset_x=25.000000 overShoulderEnemyOffset_y=-5.000000 overShoulderEnemyOffset_z=5.000000 sideShotDelta_X=0.700000 sideShotDelta_Y=5.000000 sideShotHead_Y=10.000000 FrtShot_HeadY=6.000000 FrtShot_CamY=3.000000 FrtShot_Dist=15.000000 FixedTrack_X=1.000000 FixedTrack_Y=15.000000 FixedTrack_Z=25.000000 DeathSeq_X=0.000000 DeathSeq_Y=4.000000 DeathSeq_Z=-50.000000 DeathAnimDelay=1.300000 DeathAnimDur=2.700000 [network options] ConnectionType=lan ConnectionSpeed=10000 PacketSize=472 DefaultConnection=My Connection PlayerIcon=Content\Textures\stockdecals\decal_00.tga TeamIcon=Content\Textures\stockdecals\decal_00.tga - if you need fullscreen, unpack wine-1.3.2.tar.bz2, go into that directory and run "pach -p1 -i /path/to/wine-1.3.2_mw4.patch", the file wine-1.3.2_mw4.patch containing diff -urN wine-1.3.2/dlls/ddraw/ddraw.c wine-1.3.2_mw4/dlls/ddraw/ddraw.c --- wine-1.3.2/dlls/ddraw/ddraw.c 2010-09-03 19:39:05.000000000 +0200 +++ wine-1.3.2_mw4/dlls/ddraw/ddraw.c 2010-09-07 17:45:05.851730011 +0200 @@ -4502,7 +4502,9 @@ { FIXME("Only one Direct3D device per DirectDraw object supported.\n"); LeaveCriticalSection(&ddraw_cs); - return DDERR_INVALIDPARAMS; + *device = (IDirect3DDevice7 *)object; + return D3D_OK; +// return DDERR_INVALIDPARAMS; } object = HeapAlloc(GetProcessHeap(), HEAP_ZERO_MEMORY, sizeof(*object)); - now "./configure && make" to build patched wine. - get native windows amstream.dll from somewhere, place it in the game folder - run the game "WINEDLLOVERRIDES="amstream=n" /path/to/wine-1.3.2/wine MW4.exe -noautoconfig /gosnodialogs"

2015-02-22 Admin note: the following was extracted from a user comment made in 2008 and may not be relevant to current Wine.

---

How to proceed to get the game working:

- Install it (should work fine; choose complete installation)

- Patch it, if you want to (for later patches, e.g. 3.0 you'll need to set your windows version to win98, because the Cdac14ba.dll creates an executable CDAC14BA.EXE inside windows/system32/drivers directory, which hangs, and you had to kill it several times, when you're inside game menu. For win98 it tries to load something like CDAC14BA.vxd which silently fails)

- Get a NoCD-crack from somewhere

- Sometimes, you'll have to have CD 2 inserted in your drive (or image mounted). The location of the CD must be set as CDRom-drive in winecfg, and in system.reg CDPath has to point to this location, e.g.
[Software\\Microsoft\\Microsoft Games\\MechWarrior Vengeance]
"CDPath"="D:\\"

- Create a file "options.ini" inside your game directory, containing this (modify it for your needs, these are high detail settings. screenwidth/screenheight settings might be interesting): Make sure options.ini has DOS file format (newline character is \r\n, not only \n). The easiest way is to create the file with a text editor of your choice, and then use the tool "unix2dos options.ini" (or "todos options.ini" for ubuntu users). For MW4 Black Knight, the options file is called "optionsx.ini."

-------------------

[graphics options]
videodriverindex=0
detailtexture=true
multitexture=true
lightmaps=true
culturals=true
footsteps=true
missionmusic=true
noblend=false
antialias=false
vertexlighting=true
simplelighting=false
mipbias=0
shadowmode=1
fontsmall=-2
fontmedium=-2
fontlarge=-2
fontlarge2=-2
fontlarge3=-2
screenwidth=1024
screenheight=768
bitdepth=32
fancywater=true
movietextures=true
maxlights=8
compositing=3
effectlod=0.000000
lod=0.000000
loadradius=4
HideSky=false

[sound options]
lowendsound=false
radius=1.000000
hardwaremixing=false

[special commands]
killgame=false
AutoTorsoCenter=0
HudDamageMode=false
HudTargetDamageMode=false

[server]
allowdecaltransfer=0

[network options]
ConnectionType=lan
ConnectionSpeed=10000
PacketSize=512
PlayerIcon=Content\Textures\stockdecals\decal_00.tga
TeamIcon=Content\Textures\stockdecals\decal_00.tga

[joystick]
BiThrottleCenter=0.300000
BiThrottleLow=0.250000
BiThrottleHigh=0.060000
OneThrottleCenter=0.300000
OneThrottleHigh=0.060000
OneWayThrottle=false

-----------------------

The only critical key seems to be "shadowmode=1". Don't set it to "shadowmode=2", the game will crash whenever you see a Mech (including your own one on 3rd person view)

- Run the game with

wine MW4.exe -noautoconfig -window /gosnoblade /gosusehw /gosnodialogs /gosnovideo

Explanation:
noautoconfig / gosnoblade options:
Everything blade.dll related doesn't work; autoconfig uses blade.dll.

window option:
is optional, but as fullscreen doesn't work, this seems to prevent it from trying to go to fullscreen mode.

gosusehw option:
Without it I get an error dialog saying that my hardware doesn't fit to MW4 :-)

gosnodialogs option:
optional. suppresses error dialogs, where we would have to click "continue".

gosnovideo option:
With enabled videos, game doesn't even start. I tried to recompress the videos, without success. Also native amstream.dll doesn't work (with native amstream.dll game complains about getfiltergraph, before crashing, but that seems to be a non-critical error)