Debian + wine + Savage 2 tutorial

Preamble

 

While waiting for the native Linux-Client, I tried to get Savage 2 to run in wine on my Debian Box.
I read some other threads on this topic in these forums, but none
contained a detailed description on what to do and how and a lot of
questions popped up. Also, I've been asked to write a wine-tutorial on
IRC ;)

So I decided to put up this thread/howto. It is currently far from
being complete, so please be patient with your questions. I will also
add a FAQ-Section where I will put some of the more interesting
questions from the other threads.

I would be glad, if this thread could be moved to the General Forums upon release ;)

Disclaimer

You need to have a valid license for a Microsoft operating-system
(windows) in order to be legally allowed to install some of the
components needed.
The steps and actions described in this HOWTO worked for me ™.
The HOWTO is pretty Debian-specific, although I will leave some notes on how to do those things on other systems.
If you have problems with a certain step, please consult the
documentation of the tool that causes the problems, your question might
already be answered there.
If you cannot resolve your problems, feel free to contact me on IRC ;)
Grahpical smilies are disabled in this post because I use more than 6 of them, which is forbidden by the administrators.
I use quotes to show commandlines because the code-tag seems to be unavailable.

How to use this HOWTO

First: read it completely before doing anything!
If you didn't understand something, try to read it again, google it or ask me on IRC (in that order).
Commandlines starting with "#" are to be executed with root-privileges. Please "su" or "sudo -s" before running them.
Commandlines starting with "$" are to be executed as the user who shall
later be able to play Savage 2. Executing them as root might break your
system, create security-holes, kill your dog and most importantly: if
you do those things as root, only root will be able to play - THIS IS
NOT GOOD! (Never play as root. Seriously!)

Preparation

First of all, you will need some tools, we will install them step by step.
This step has to be done with root-privileges. So please "su" or "sudo
-s" to get a root-shell before executing any of the command-lines
mentioned (note the #).
It is very important that you clean your system of any previous wine-installations!

Distributed parts:

python-gnome2-desktop, python2.4-cairo, python-libxml2, python-glade2, wine, cabextract, orange, winbind (optional but usefull)

Use your favorite package-manager to install those. Pay attention to
install the correct libwine-audio-package for your setup (alsa should
work, esd recommended for users of GNOME or other
esd/pulseaudio-desktops, jack recommended for KDE-users, nas or oss).
Also, libwine-gl is important, but it should be installed automatically
if you select the "wine"-metapackage.

Users of other distributions should look for packages that provide the same names/features or install those things from the web.

From the web:

wine-doors

Note that this might already be included in your distribution. You
should use that version, if possible. However, Debian ships without
this tool. You can get it at:
Wine-doors.org
Be sure to download the .deb-package, if you use Debian or Ubuntu. Users of other distributions should get the Tarball.

Debian/Ubuntu-users can now install this package:

Please adjust the path as appropriate. If any errors occur,
please read them and try to resolve them. They are usually caused by
unmet dependencies, so please ensure that you installed all the
distributed parts mentioned before.

Users of other distributions please consult the documentation on how to
install the tarball or look for a package shipped by your distributor
or third parties.

Setting up "windows"

If you have not already done so, you should delete your
wine-configuration-directory. This is especially important if you used
winetools or some other GUI to manage wine-applications in the past. If
you installed things into "c:program files" before, you will now
probably lose those things, so create a backup before deleting!

You are free to modify the path to the backup, but this way it
should land on your desktop and be easy to find and restore later.

Now it's time to get wine-doors running. This tool is still in a pretty
early stage of development, so some things might be broken (they were
for me). Please see the Troubleshooting-section at the end of the
HOWTO, if wine-doors won't start or operate as expected.

Start it as a user:

Now the nice "first run"-dialog will pop up. It will ask for your
name and company-name, you can leave those empty or enter anything you
want. You will also have to tick the license-box in order to proceed
correctly. Note that noone will keep you from ticking the box if you
don't own a license, but this is illegal and might be persecuted by law!

wine-doors will now download and install some core-components as well
as setup your wine-directory. If you installed wine-tools and some
dialog-presenter, you will now be asked whether wine shall execute a
certain command. This dialog will pop up for every call of wine unless
disabled by the "Disable"-Button. You should do this, those things are
pretty annoying.
wine-doors will install a software called "AutoHotKeys" to automate
future installations of other components. This software has some
problems, so keep an eye on what is happening and if an error occurs
have a look at the troubleshooting-section. If you are asked whether to
install something into "c:windowstemp" (note the missing ) or whether
to create this directory, answer NO! This is one of the bugs, please
change the directory to "c:windowstemp" using the "Browse..."-button
and click "OK".
I also had problems with the mozilla-ActiveX-control, but they can be
ignored. It might not find the mozilla-binaries and ask you for their
path. You can pick any path you want, or cancel the installation. If
you want to use them lateron (for example to download windows-updates),
you should provide a path that you can remember, so you can install
firefox into that path later.

After finishing the core-installation you will be presented a nice menu
where you can pick things to install. We need DirectX9 and Mono
(.NET-Framework). Select them from the list and click their
"Install"-links on the right. After that click "Apply" and wine-doors
will download and install those components. You might want to install
other core-components such as the fonts, VisualBasic runtimes, etc.

Installation of Savage 2

If you have already installed Savage 2 in windows and are able to fully
access the installation from Linux, you can skip this step. Probably
you won't either because you have no windows installed or your windows
uses NTFS, which is accessible but slow and instable. If you installed
on FAT32, you should have no problems.

To install Savage 2, download the latest installer from the website and execute it with wine:

Please adjust the path as appropriate.
The installer will start and ask you to accept the license, standard-stuff ;)

Now it will try to install the .NET-libraries. Let it run until it
obviously hangs and kill the .NET-installer (NOT the
Savage-Installer!). You can use xkill, the "terminate process"-feature
of you desktop environment, right-click the task-bar-entry and choose
"kill" or click the close-button in the window-border (ususally an X in
the top right corner) and confirm if your desktop asks you whether to
kill the application. This is OK and won't cause any problems, as we
already installed Mono before.

After the .NET-installation "succeeded", it will install DirectX. Yes,
we also did this ourselves before, but for some reason the setup won't
detect this correctly. So let it install DirectX9. I didn't encounter
any problems here.

Now Savage is going to be installed. Be patient and wait for the
installer to finish. It might look like it hangs sometimes, but it will
continue and eventually finish normally. You might have to Ctrl-C in
the commandline after the window of the installer disappeared.

Setting up the windows-desktop

For debugging purposes I recommend using an emulated desktop. You can
change this and other settings by calling the wine-configurator:

$ winecfg

Browse through the tabs and adjust the settings to your machine and
setup. If you want to experience sound, you should also check that the
correct framework is picked.
Choose "emulate virtual desktop" in the graphics-tab and set the
resolution below your current desktop-resolution (1024x786 should be OK
for most people, as they use 1280x1024 or higher resolutions for their
desk).

Updating Savage

As in the installation-step, if you have an existing installation from
windows which is up-to-date, you can skip this step. But I recommend to
do it, because it will avoid problems.

To update Savage, simply run the updater in wine:

If you did not install into the default directory, adjust the path. Don't forget the " around the path, if it contains spaces!
NOTE: Running the updater is my recommended method of starting Savage, this way you will always be up-to-date ;)
First, a windows-GUI-updater will start, it probably won't do much
apart from displaying a status-bar and loading the real game
afterwards. Now click on "Login" in the main-menu and enter your
account-data. The game will now check for updates, download and extract
them and restart itself. Please be patient ;)

You can now adjust the options to your needs and try the tutorial- and practice-mode.

Running Savage 2

As mentioned in the update-section, you should always start Savage 2
via the savage2_update.exe. The game should come up normally and you
can play like you are used to from windows ;) (or not, if you don't
have windows installed).

If you did not install into the default directory, adjust the path. Don't forget the " around the path, if it contains spaces!

Troubleshooting / Known issues

There are some problems that I encountered. I list them here together with their solution.

• c:windowstemp
  • wine-doors tries to automate installation
    of components with AutoHotKeys. However, this tool seems to have some
    bugs. Whenever a path is to contain backslashes (), they are missing.
    You have to change the path by using the "Browse..."-button. Note that
    manually adding the backslashes in the input-field will probably not
    work (it didn't for me)!


• Missing player-models
  • I
    experienced a problem with missing player-models. Everything works fine
    in the tutorial and the practice-mode, but in online-games players are
    invisible (including yourself). Problem is known, solution is unknown.
    If anybody has any idea, please contact me.