Football Manager 2008

[wild_oscar]

Yes he did get the game running, and it seems he didn't need a no-cd patch. That's what's so frustrating, as far as I'm aware it should be relatively straightforward ...however I can't get it to work unless I play the game in my XP VMware image.

He got the demo running, not the game. You don't have copy protection in the demo.

[brecke]

He got the demo running, not the game. You don't have copy protection in the demo.

aha!! some light at the end of the tunnel... no?

[uboat77]

my first post on this forum
well everything run smoothly (only had a few probs with my /.wine folder, wich insisted in not beeing there...deleted it and reinstalled wine and now works fine)!
So, the FM2008 runs fine...until i tryied to type something in the search box, or even my manager name...it just doesn work! i can't type anything! i've already put the "&" ate the end of the "wine fm.exe" command and even launched "hupno wine fm.exe" (so i can kill the terminal without killing the fm process)...nothing works...
can anyone shed a light on this??
thanks

[WanderingKnight]

<snip>

Sorry, stupid mistake.

[WanderingKnight]

Okay, this is not working. I got it working once, it would quit because it said I didn't have Java installed (which wasn't so, I even had FM07 installed). So I rm -rf'ed .wine in order to start anew, installed the Java 5 Runtime with Windows 2000 compatibility, and then proceeded to run the installer, with XP compatibility. When it was loading, I got a stupid error ("The game can't be installed on your system").

Here's the log:

bilkis@bilkis:~/iso$ wine setup.exe 
ALSA lib conf.c:3949:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters 0
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:0
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {9a5ea990-3034-4d6f-9128-01f3c61022bc} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {9a5ea990-3034-4d6f-9128-01f3c61022bc} could be created for context 0x1
fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00000400
bilkis@bilkis:~/iso$ ALSA lib conf.c:3949:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters 0
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:0
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x32ad44,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),1,0x32ad44,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x33bd3c,0x00000000), stub!
err:wgl:X11DRV_SetPixelFormat Invalid operation on root_window
err:wgl:X11DRV_GetPixelFormat Unable to find a WineGLPixelFormat for iPixelFormat=0
err:d3d:CreateContext SetPixelFormat failed on HDC=0x1dc for iPixelFormat=1
err:d3d:IWineD3DDeviceImpl_CreateAdditionalSwapChain Failed to create a new context
fixme:ddraw:D3D7CB_CreateAdditionalSwapChain (0x998e2c0) call to IWineD3DDevice_CreateAdditionalSwapChain failed
err:ddraw:IDirectDrawImpl_CreateSurface IDirectDrawImpl_AttachD3DDevice failed, hr = 8876086a
fixme:font:WineEngCreateFontInstance Untranslated charset 255
fixme:imm:ImmGetOpenStatus (0x9ac62f8): semi-stub
fixme:imm:ImmSetConversionStatus (0x9ac62f8, 1, 0): stub
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f490) stub!
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f4bc) stub!
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f4bc) stub!
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f48c) stub!
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f48c) stub!
fixme:process:IsWow64Process (0xffffffff 0x33f4e4) stub!
fixme:imm:ImmGetOpenStatus (0x996aee0): semi-stub
err:heap:HEAP_ValidateInUseArena Heap 0x110000: in-use arena 0x12e090 next block has PREV_FREE flag

Any ideas? It also doesn't seem to want to run again (gray Java window). I'm on 7.10.

[00dyel]

ive got the same problem as uboat77- i cant type anything in and none of f4, f5 or other quick keys work. its like the keyboard becomes disabled. Does anyone know why?

[filipebrandao_]

Anyone experiencing black screen when you change to other window (ALT+TAB) and then back to the game? If I press ALT+F4 on the game while the black screen is appearing I get the normal sreen game back plus a the 'exit confirmation' message box but sometimes it quits the game or when I go back to the game window the game freezes. I was wondering if someone knows how to bring back the normal screen without having to pray or how to don't get any black screen at all. Maybe if i could run the game through a window :s

I've installed the game with Windows XP and just copied it to the wine drive_c folder. It runs pretty well although...

[filipebrandao_]

Anyone experiencing black screen when you change to other window (ALT+TAB) and then back to the game? If I press ALT+F4 on the game while the black screen is appearing I get the normal sreen game back plus a the 'exit confirmation' message box but sometimes it quits the game or when I go back to the game window the game freezes. I was wondering if someone knows how to bring back the normal screen without having to pray or how to don't get any black screen at all. Maybe if i could run the game through a window :s

I've installed the game with Windows XP and just copied it to the wine drive_c folder. It runs pretty well although...

Now I can deactivate the Fullscreen mode in the game options. It was showing me this error in the console:

 *bla bla bla* No matching mode found(1024x768x16)! (XRandR)

I added some lines in my xorg.conf and now i can change to windowed mode but I need to change the resolution of the screen when I run i because it changes automatically and now i see this error in the console:

fixme:xrandr:X11DRV_XRandR_SetCurrentMode Cannot change screen BPP from 32 to 16

Btw, the game runs better with OSS than with ALSA. If you want even better performance , uncheck all the drivers shown at winecfg .

[AndyCooll]

Ok, I thought I should do an update for this thread.

I can now confirm that the full version of FM2008 does run under Wine and doesn't require a no-cd patch or anything similar.

1. Install Java. Either the version I've linked too, or the OP'ers version it doesn't matter, both seem to work.

2. Using the terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) type:

winecfg

At the bottom of the box that opens it says "Windows version", change this to XP.

3. Insert your game disk. It will probably place an icon on your desktop. Click on it and then Install the game by clicking the setup.exe file and following the instructions.

4. Play the game by typing into the terminal:

 wine "C:\Program Files\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2008\fm.exe"

A few additional points I should mention here:

- The OP says you need to amend winecfg to XP and then install Java. I found that when Wine is first installed it defaults to Windows 2000, and Java installs fine under that.

- FM2008 also seems to work fine running under Wine XP or Vista (though I must be honest and point out that I haven't actually played FM extensively under either environment yet).

- If the game crashes, see the OP's notes.

- If you get some ALSA warning errors, these are related to Wine's handling of sound. I opened up Winecfg, clicked on the Audio tab and changed the default sound to OSS. I don't play the game with sound so I can't tell you what effect this has other than it makes the error message go away.

- The other biggy for me were all the "errle:CoGetClassObject class {9a5ea990-3034-4d6f-9128-01f3c61022bc} not registered" type error messages ultimately resulting in the game failing to launch. These are linked to the games built in security checks. As I mentioned in one of my early posts in this thread, there were lots of complaints on the SI forums about legal CD's not being recognised. Turns out it was a fault with the Securom security protection having a problem recognising some CD-drives. To get round this I've had to install a copy of XP in VMware (I tried VirtualBox and Qemu but got the same errors when trying to install the game as I'd had using Wine), I then installed the game in XP and installed the games latest patch (which at the time of writing this is just a beta, but you can find it here).
Finally I copied the "Sports Interactive" folder in the XP VMware images Program Files over to my "/home/username/.wine/drive_c/Program Files" folder. And ... BINGO! At last it works!

As I mentioned at the beginning I haven't tested the game extensively yet, but so far it seems to be working. There's a visible box which appears over my pointer everytime I click on a button but I can live with that. I haven't had an issue with the ALT+TAB issue mentioned in the previous post to this. If in winecfg under the "Graphics" tab you remove the tick from "Allow the window manager to control the windows" I find the result is that the game minimises to a small box to the bottom left of the desktop when I switch desks. Double clicking on that box then brings the game back again. Sometimes the game is slow to respond, but it does seem to work. However, I usually just leave that tick alone. [Update: Having played the game further, I've been finding that the minimise window doesn't seem to "unmimise" if left to the window manager (i.e the tick isn't removed). So I now suggest you remove the tick from "Allow the window manager to control the windows"

[wild_oscar]

Can you tell us if you need a no-cd crack to play the game, Andy?