Rome: Total War

[dogeatery]

I've been scouring the internet for a way to play Rome: Total War in Ubuntu ever since I switched from Windows. It always ends up being described as 'impossible.' Finally I found this very recent post on linuxgames.com forums:

Hi,
I use Cedega 6 and Rome Total War works like it should be.
Choose for WinME as OS during install and play.

Can anyone else confirm this as possible? I'm traveling and don't have my copies of the game discs handy. *crossing fingers*

[TheThinker]

Hmmmm. Intriguing. I never thought that changing Wine's OS before installation would have any effect, but it does make sense. I'll be happy to try it out!

(crosses fingers also)

[hikaricore]

Perhaps setting it as ***dowsME scares the title into running? ^_^

[TheThinker]

Perhaps setting it as ***dowsME scares the title into running? ^_^

LOL. With Microsoft products,you often need to do that.

[Codename]

Perhaps setting it as ***dowsME scares the title into running? ^_^

Best post all day!

[TheThinker]

I tried the suggestion, and it failed still. Curiously, it did give me a strange error when I ran the game after installation on WindowsME. It states:

"Debugger Detected. Unload the debugger and try again."

Or something like that. The same error message exists when I ran the game after installation on Win98 as well.

When I ran it on later OSs like XP and Vista, RTW simply gives me that splash screen and crashes with no error message whatsoever.

I tried reinstalling the game with a different OS like Vista and Windows 2000, but the pattern stays the same. It seems that the installation process isn't dependant on Wine's OS to have it work later on. I'd reinstall the game under Windows98, but something tells me it's not worth trying given this pattern.

[chiefwhosm]

Makes it sound like a copy protection issue.

Can't speak for full game, but with demo after install you had two exe files. The first exe, the one things like desktop shortcuts etc linked to, contained copy protection, so wine would fail to run it. The second exe had no protection (who knows why) and would run flawlessly.
This of course was years ago when the demo for ROTW was first released, so whether it still works like this, I couldn't say.

[dogeatery]

yeah, I eventually tried switching hte OS and it didn't fix anything. In fact, I got that same debugger message. I haven't checked in a while, but going through these boards recently I found that some people were indeed running the game (with some minor glitches) but the steps they took were complicated and over my head... I'd be thrilled just to have Medieval: Total War (the old one) working at this point