Open General on Linux with Wine

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Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2020-01-23 15:58, Thursday

Now for the obligatory joke about how Open General and Wine go perfectly together, although you might want to avoid multiplayer or campaign/scenario design with too much wine. Having said that, I now have Open General working with all the bells and whistles including weather effects, audio and video playback, on a multi-monitor setup.

Note that this is a recreation of the thread on the topic originally posted on JP's, updated.

Linux Distro: Debian bookworm
Desktop: KDE Plasma
Application Launcher: Lutris
Wine Version: system
Architecture: 32 bit
Hardware Wrinkles: multiple monitors

The first problem was that I have a multiple monitor setup and the app wasn't opening on the correct monitor. My two monitors have different resolutions, both monitors are identical but the second one sits a bit further away from me so I have it on a lower resolution to make it easier to work with and read--old eyes. The app was opening as if it was in full screen mode on the primary monitor, but it was opening on the secondary monitor, which meant it was opening in a resolution that rendered much of the game window off the screen. When I tried to move the game window it would deform.

The simple solution to this is alt-f3. That is the default kwin shortcut for the "Window Operations Menu". When you bring that up you can set the window settings for Open General, or any app, to anything you want. I found that the "Initial Placement" option, screen 1, was what I was looking for. That opened the game on my main screen without messing around with any of the other game windows. You can find those settings under "More Actions", "Configure Special Application Settings".

Getting video playback working:

NOTE: I have yet to get video playback working perfectly under Debian bookworm. The audio plays, but the video doesn't show. If anyone finds a fix for this issue, please post here and I will add it to the OP.

Note that this was accomplished under Debian Bullseye, but should be able to be modified to work under other distros. I have also found that Lutris is the best launcher for WINE games, so this answer will assume you are familiar with Lutris and with winetricks. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into detail on how to use those, but that information is available on the web.

First off, Open General is a 32 bit application, so you should already have multiarch enabled in your distro, if you don't, see the following Debian FAQ.

https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO

You will need in install the following Debian packages or their equivalent, depending on your distro. You can run the following command on Debian:

sudo apt install ffmpeg:i386 gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad:i386 gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly:i386

You will want to install lutris and winetricks if you haven't already:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install lutris winetricks
You will want to use the default system version of wine, not the patched versions available through Lutris. You will need to install the Shark007 standard codec past. You can choose full install and default settings. After you have created a menu item for Open General in Lutris, you should be able to right click on the shortcut, choose "Run EXE inside wine prefix" and select the Shark007 installation executable to install it.

You can download the Shark007 Standard Codes here:
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/detail ... odecs.html

You will need to configure Shark007 Codecs to use LAV for both AVI and WMV video to get it to work.

You will need to set your wine prefix to run in Windows 7 mode or later. Your Open General videos should now play.

Note that in older Linux and wine versions you could use winetricks to install ffdshow, however, that no longer seems to work. The Shark007 codecs however, do seem to work.

ADDENDUM: I have found that there are a couple of packages that improve the function of just about any application running under wine, you can install them on Debian using the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install wine32-preloader wine64-preloader
Last edited by Llewen on 2023-09-21 11:36, Thursday, edited 5 times in total.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2020-01-23 16:28, Thursday

It appears that the audio in the intro video to Open General is not working. Not sure why that doesn't work, it is working in the campaign videos. Suffice to say that you may need to mess around with Shark007's settings to get that working, and if you do, please post here with the solution so I can add it to the op.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2020-10-31 13:52, Saturday

Updated the OP.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by lvjtn » 2020-11-06 19:02, Friday

just a quck question. do we really need to add all those 32bit i386 packages? i've checked my laptop, and adding wine would require more than 1gb disk space, which sounds a bit ridiculous. as it works on my desktop pc, i don't mind, but in the future, it can be intersting to use only wine64 packages for opengen :scratch
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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2020-11-06 19:30, Friday

Open General is 32 bit is it not? If it is, then yes, you need those 32 bit packages. If it isn't, then you don't. I just assumed it was because most games of this vintage are. But seeing as Luis is compiling it, it's entirely possible it isn't... :)

And yes, 1GB seems like a lot until you realize you are essentially adding an entire OS.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by lvjtn » 2020-11-06 20:07, Friday

Llewen wrote:
2020-11-06 19:30, Friday
Open General is 32 bit is it not?
yes, it is, i just wondered whether the x64 libs in linux had backward compatibility, as ubuntu planed to drop the entire i386 support, but it seems it's necessary for running wine, and at least the ubuntu 20.04 lts supports the i386 packages :phew
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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2020-11-06 20:31, Friday

lvjtn wrote:
2020-11-06 20:07, Friday
Llewen wrote:
2020-11-06 19:30, Friday
Open General is 32 bit is it not?
yes, it is, i just wondered whether the x64 libs in linux had backward compatibility, as ubuntu planed to drop the entire i386 support, but it seems it's necessary for running wine, and at least the ubuntu 20.04 lts supports the i386 packages :phew
That's one reason why I have no plans to ever switch to Ubuntu. I use Debian which gives me access to all of the goodies Ubuntu offers, but still provides support for important things like 32 bit libraries.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2021-12-14 21:50, Tuesday

Once again taking a stab at getting the video replay working properly on wine. Will report back.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2022-01-01 21:32, Saturday

Video playback is working properly, I have updated the OP.

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Re: Open General on Linux with Wine

Post by Llewen » 2023-09-21 11:34, Thursday

UPDATE:

I have yet to get video playback working properly under Debian bookworm, which is now full wayland. I have also added a note to the OP, I have discovered two packages that improve the running of just about any application under wine. So much so that I'm surprised it took me so long to find good information on them. You can install them on Debian using the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install wine32-preloader wine64-preloader

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