The new Offical home of this HOWTO:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Linux
The most up-to-date version will be there. If you have a problem check the wiki before posting an issue in the fourms here.
Oblivion under Ubuntu with Wine.
Here's my first HOWTO on the Ubuntu Forums. If I **** something up post a fix or comment, since I'm mostly going by memory here. I saw some requests for this, and I thought this would be a great way to support Ubuntu. =)
As of this writing WINE 0.9.29 provides the best play experience. The GIT and 0.9.30 release now have improved D3D caps support, however this causes rendering errors for skinned meshes. Mostly in the form of bad shadow maps and improper skinning. This isn't a guide about developing wined3d, so let's get the last working version.
1. Where do you get Wine?
Normally you could use the winehq.org site's guide to setup for Ubuntu, however 0.9.29 is now in the archives at wine.budgetdedicated.com.
2. Pick the package for the version of Ubuntu
You just need to download and install the package you need based on your distro, which will be either Edgy or Dapper. If you're on x86_64 you can just use the same i386 package by using the --force-architecture flag. You'll need to install lib32 support of course if you're on x86_64, and don't forget asound32 for your ALSA sound!
Code:
# x86_64 users should install the needed ia32-libs and force
apt-get install -u ia32-libs lib32asound2 lib32z1 lib32stdc++6 linux32
dpkg -iE --force-architecture wine_0.9.29~winehq0~ubuntu~6.10-1_i386.deb
# i386 users just install as normal
dpkg -iE wine_0.9.29~winehq0~ubuntu~6.10-1_i386.deb
3. Wine setup is critical to getting this off the ground. First make sure your .wine is 'modern and complete'. This won't hose your old settings, but it will fix problems if you have setup from an older version of wine.
4. Setup Wine for running Oblivion.
You may also need to copy d3dx9_27.dll to your ~/.wine/c_drive/Windows/System32 if needed. This dll is mainly for some symbol resolution issues. You can copy it from a Windows install or use cabextract and get it from the Oblivion DVD's DirectX.
Code:
# This could be /media/cdrom or whatever your DVD mount point is called.
apt-get install cabextract
cabextract /media/cdrom/DXREDIST/Aug2005_d3dx9_27_x86.cab
Now on to the main event WINE configuration.
Once you load up winecfg you can do most of your tweaking in this nice GUI.
Graphics tab.
Code:
[x] Emulate a virtual desktop
Desktop size: [1024] x [768]
Vertex Shader Support [Hardware]
[x] Allow Pixel Shader
You can disable the virtual desktop, however if you have a misbehaving game it'll screw up your display resolution just like in Windows when it falls back. How's that for compatibility? =)
Audio tab.
Code:
[x] ALSA Driver
Hardware Acceleration [Emulation]
Default Sample Rate [44100] Default Bits Per Sample [16]
[x] Driver Emulation
Desktop Integration tab.
Here you should make a folder as your 'Windows folder base' and populate it. I use ~/Documents/Windows/. After you make these folders match them up in this interface, since Oblivion follows the logo requirements and uses a 'My Games' folder.
Code:
mkdir -p ~/Documents/Windows/{Desktop,Documents,Pictures,Music,Video}
Your ini and saved games will be under:
Code:
~/Documents/Windows/Documents/My Games/Oblivion/
I copied my old save games and such to the 'Saves' folder under Oblivion, and they all worked fine.
Drives tab.
Add a new drive for example 'D:' and click Show Advanced to set it as a CDROM drive. Browse to the mount point for your Oblivion DVD or loopback image. In my example it's '/opt/games/Windows/CDROM/'.
If you have the space I'd suggest copying your Oblivion DVD to a disk image, so you can keep it in your Collector's box. You all bought the Collector's Edition didn't you? Well you should it has some cool stuff. Here's a handy, dandy bash script to mount your Oblivion.iso.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
ISO=/opt/iso/Oblivion.iso
sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 $ISO /opt/games/Windows/CDROM/
5. Registry editing in Wine. Run the command below and it'll pop-up a Wine version of regedit.
Now browse HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Wine / Direct3D. Right click in the pane to make New > String Value for each of the following key pairs:
Code:
OffscreenRenderingMode fbo
UseGLSL enabled
VideoMemorySize 256
Make sure you have 256MB of video memory and GLSL support before enabling. Set whatever is needed for your card, but note w/o GLSL Oblivion won't run. I use a Nvidia 6800 GS with 256MB of RAM, and it gets it done.
6. Installing in Wine. There is nothing to this one, you just click and go. The only thing that might bite you is if you see the error 'out of disk space', and you know you have enough space. If you see this you might want to map another drive in Wine to the partition you're installing on. For example I use G: for my /opt partition. After this Wine will see the correct disk space for /opt on the G: drive.
Code:
# Use /media/cdrom or whatever your mount point is here.
cd /media/cdrom
wine setup.exe
7. Install the patch. Go grab the 1.1.5xx patch for Oblivion, and install it under Wine. If you installed Oblivion under Wine then this is just watching the bar scroll to complete.
8. First run. I suggest copying the Oblivion icon on your desktop to your Windows/Desktop. Go ahead and run the icon or OblivionLaucher.exe directly once. Set the general options you want, and exit. You'll want to reduce your game resolution and lower defaults as needed. In general I find the types of shaders are the real slow down more than the draw distance, etc. Turn off HDR/Bloom or you won't see anything. =)
9. Tweaking Oblivion.ini. There are a lot of sites that do an entire article on just this, however I'd suggest at least these two changes:
Code:
bForce1XShaders=0
bSaveOnInteriorExteriorSwitch=0
SIntroSequence=
bUseWaterShader=0
The 1X shaders cause crashes for menus and outdoors, so you don't want them. The other option avoids saving everytime you open a door, and that means less file I/O. Hell, you shouldn't be using these in Windows either. If you don't care about looks so much you can enable gobal light model, which is much faster and looks much worst as well. Clearing out the intro sequence resolves a crash for some. Disabling the water shader means no pretty water, but it can be worth up to 50fps or more. If you get 2fps anywhere in the game try disabling this shader, and you'll likely get a huge speed boost. You can remove the purple color from the water by replacing its DDS texture. I'd suggest editing the texture below to be a highly transparent light grey, or whatever you perfer.
If you get 'purple water' once you turn off the water shader you can fix that by using Excors' replacement DDS texture:
10. Playing! Now you can finally play the game. I suggest disabling all the debug spew to get more performance. Also here is the shell script I use.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
# This script disables all the text output for Wine
# debugging for improved performace.
export WINEDEBUG=fixme-all,err-all,warn-all,trace-all
OBLIVION_DIR=/opt/games/Windows/Oblivion
cd ${OBLIVION_DIR}
wine OblivionLauncher.exe
The new Offical home of this HOWTO:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Linux
You should also visit the Wine AppDB page:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=5777
Here's a screenshot of Oblivion in Wine at my blog for the old version of this HOWTO:
http://mongooseichiban.blogspot.com/...nder-wine.html
Here's a screenshot of Oblivion in Wine for the current version of this HOWTO:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryhendrix/377865984/
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