ZylGadis
September 10th, 2006, 05:04 PM
I've tried to run Morrowind a few times with no success. Today I decided to investigate why some people (me included) have a certain problem, while others play it freely. Since I only have one type of hardware configuration, I ask people with different hardware (or even the same, if that is possible) who have managed to run the game to share their experiences here, with the hope that we can resolve the situation.
Here it goes:
I have a NVidia 5200, and an Nvidia 6200 (in a different box). I use Dapper on both boxes.
There are generally two ways to run Morrowind with wine: either install it in Windows, copy the files over to Linux and add a few .dlls, or use a wonderful Loki installer that does that for you (http://www.liflg.org)
No matter which way I go, I have the same experience. The launcher splash screen with the Options, Data Files, etc menu starts and works great. When I start the game itself, though - either by clicking on Play in the launcher splash screen or by typing "morrowind" (which does "wine Morrowind.exe"), the console spits a few hundred of warning messages (which is quite normal with wine and usually has no effect on the program), then a small 320x240 window shows up, and immediately another, smaller error window shows on top of it, stating "Render Creation Error: Unknown stencil mode format."
I have tried all kinds of configurations of wine and/or Morrowind (pixel shaders on/off, etc). The only change to the above that I have encountered (i.e. it produces a different error message at the same point) is if I manually go into the wine registry and change Morrowind's screen depth to 24 bits - the default is 32. Then the game complains that it must run in 32 bit depth.
So far, so good. Indeed, my Xorg runs in 24bit depth. I tried to push it to run in 32bit, and it crashed, telling me that my hardware does not support that.
After a bit of googling through nvidia forums, I came across the following:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17543
It seems I have a problem with the bit depth - the nvidia driver for linux does not support 32bits. The last 8 bits are only used for alpha (i.e. transparency) anyway, so you don't need them much. Morrowind, though, uses a lot of transparent overlays. It is my suspicion that my 24bit depth is the reason for the Uknown stencil mode format error, and I cannot change that to 32 because of the Nvidia driver.
Is there someone who can report running Morrowind successfully in Linux with an Nvidia?
I know there are people here who enjoy playing the game in Linux - for example, AI. Can you please post your hardware configuration and, in particular, graphics card, graphics driver, and screen resolution and depth?
Thanks.
P.S. If someone is interested, I can post a screenshot with the "Unknown stencil mode format" message.
Here it goes:
I have a NVidia 5200, and an Nvidia 6200 (in a different box). I use Dapper on both boxes.
There are generally two ways to run Morrowind with wine: either install it in Windows, copy the files over to Linux and add a few .dlls, or use a wonderful Loki installer that does that for you (http://www.liflg.org)
No matter which way I go, I have the same experience. The launcher splash screen with the Options, Data Files, etc menu starts and works great. When I start the game itself, though - either by clicking on Play in the launcher splash screen or by typing "morrowind" (which does "wine Morrowind.exe"), the console spits a few hundred of warning messages (which is quite normal with wine and usually has no effect on the program), then a small 320x240 window shows up, and immediately another, smaller error window shows on top of it, stating "Render Creation Error: Unknown stencil mode format."
I have tried all kinds of configurations of wine and/or Morrowind (pixel shaders on/off, etc). The only change to the above that I have encountered (i.e. it produces a different error message at the same point) is if I manually go into the wine registry and change Morrowind's screen depth to 24 bits - the default is 32. Then the game complains that it must run in 32 bit depth.
So far, so good. Indeed, my Xorg runs in 24bit depth. I tried to push it to run in 32bit, and it crashed, telling me that my hardware does not support that.
After a bit of googling through nvidia forums, I came across the following:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17543
It seems I have a problem with the bit depth - the nvidia driver for linux does not support 32bits. The last 8 bits are only used for alpha (i.e. transparency) anyway, so you don't need them much. Morrowind, though, uses a lot of transparent overlays. It is my suspicion that my 24bit depth is the reason for the Uknown stencil mode format error, and I cannot change that to 32 because of the Nvidia driver.
Is there someone who can report running Morrowind successfully in Linux with an Nvidia?
I know there are people here who enjoy playing the game in Linux - for example, AI. Can you please post your hardware configuration and, in particular, graphics card, graphics driver, and screen resolution and depth?
Thanks.
P.S. If someone is interested, I can post a screenshot with the "Unknown stencil mode format" message.