CoX on Linux - Does one dare to dream?

Well, after installing Ubuntu 9.10 and Wine 1.1.31, I made a report for the Wine AppDB where I mark the game as Gold.



Installing the game didn't even need a trip to the terminal this time. I installed Wine from the new Ubuntu Software Center, and then I found CohUpdater.exe, right-clicked it, and selected "Run with Wine Windows Program Loader". It just worked. It launched the game and I was playing right away with minor issues.

* When I tried to launch the game from the desktop icon, it didn't work. The Updater launches, but the game doesn't launch from it; which is odd as it worked fine the first time. However, right-clicking CohUpdater.exe and launching it with Wine works just as well as before.

* Pressing Enter in the chat box sends the line to the chat but it doesn't remove the focus from the chat window. Pressing Esc in the chat window clears the focus.

The other glitches are not Wine's fault:

* Trying to change costumes or editing Architect missions crashes the game on NVIDIA cards. This is actually not Wine's fault; the game expects to get a 8x antialiased image back to create the preview images for your costume (and for the mobs), but the NVIDIA Linux drivers only support up to 4x antialiasing. I had to run the game with cityofheroes.exe -project coh -usetexenvcombine to create missions in the Architect without crashes. There should be a configuration option that fixes this in a later Wine release, since NVIDIA has no intention to fix it.

* The nvidia-glx-185 drivers don't support water effects and don't let you pick the high quality shaders manually (but the shaders work by selecting the "Quality" graphics setting). People with Radeon video cards may have better luck getting those to work.

* Key autorepeat is broken in xorg/xserver; so it looks like you're constantly pressing/releasing a key instead of holding it down. Disabling key autorepeat from System / Administration / Keyboard fixes that.

First I would like to thank Leandro for posting those instructions. (Totally save my butt after a botched windows 7 upgrade. So now I use Ubuntu 9.10 on my gaming machine as well with the aid of WINE version 1.1.31.)

However there is one error in the instructions, starting from step #5.
It took me a little bit to figure out, but now the game is working well.

Where he says:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leandro 5) Once that's done, go up one folder to drive_c. Copy CohUpdater.exe into the drive_c folder.*** 6) Back to the terminal, change to the drive_c directory and run wine CohUpdater.exe

One folder up from the "City of Heroes" directory is actually the "Program Files" folder Not "drive_c".

After replicating his instructions through the graphic user interface substituting "Program Files" for the destination for the CohUpdater.exe instead of "drive_c" it worked! Yay! (At least it did for me. No terminal commands required )
Thank you Leandro! i can play CoH because of you.


I use an ATI graphics card and don't have the same problems of the Nvidia.
2 important things about using ATI graphics card for city of heroes. (using ubuntu 9.10 & Wine 1.1.31)

1) Un-check "repeat keys" in the "system/preferences/keyboard" in the Ubuntu drop down main menu options. This fixes jerky character movement and lets "super jump" function correctly as well.

2) If you use "Compiz-Fusion" un-check the "add-on" button for animations. Regular effects like "wobbly windows" or "genie" animation effects will work fine but "Burn" and "Beam Up" effects for window animations make bad things happen when running CoH in wine.(Bad like locking up your human interface devices in situations where they are not able to interact with the program.) *sad face*

My ATI radeon 3850 runs the game perfectly otherwise

(Of course it takes time to get used to the chat focus glitch in wine, but i just need to click off from the chat box to stop typing.)

Thanks for this post guys.

Don't know if anyone is still having issues getting passed geom.pigg in the CoHUpdater.exe running with Wine,
but I have solved it (on my end) ...

Terminal :
sudo su
(enter password)
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem
4096 87380 524288
(was mine)

at this point, I doubled the middle value.
echo 4096 116760 524288 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem

This should work.
NOTE: Do NOT exit terminal as CoH is updating/fixing files.
Sometimes that tends to reset the values to the defaults,
which you can change if you know how to access the TCP Conf file through Terminal.

Hope that helps.

Just did all the steps in here to get it to work, but I can't get CoH to skip the updater (since it won't load properly from the updater, just goes to the banner and sits there) with -project coh

What graphics card do you have? CoH on Linux works well with ATI, at a basic level (no Ultra Mode) with Nvidia, and not at all with Intel.

ATI Mobility Radeon

Assuming you're using the closed-source ATI drivers, try upgrading and downgrading your graphics drivers. Some of the 10.x series of drivers work better than others.

If you're using the open-source drivers, try using the closed-source ones instead.

So you can run CoH with Wine and without Cedega?

My Windows-run gaming comp died over the weekend, and I'm checking my options.

good luck D.B.B.