24 replies to this topic

[krazykoala]

The title says it all.

[Nowayback]

I'm with your question. Especially on engines!

[karacho]

at the beginning just try.

you can get good clues at the appdb from winehq. sometimes you can see at appdb that some game works good on engine XY while it has problems with wine XX because something has changed. some things are just experience (like that 1.3.8 had better mouse support on some games).

for older games i usually try 1.2.3 ICE first because it's the latest build marked as "stable" from the wine crew.

if it doesn't work with any wine engine try a crossover one because some libs are different. for excample i just could get "perry rhodan" running on CXG8 - every other engine failed completely.

you will get a feel to it when you have ported some games.


so it's a good start to look at the appdb, what's propably marked as gold or even platinum and try this engine. if this works, perhaps try the newest one and see if it works, too. propably you will get a performance increasment.

winetricks: i always use the most recent winetricks.

[Nowayback]

Thank you for the information (:

Winetricks adds .ddl files right? To fix some issues like sound, mouse movement, etc.?

[NSObject]

^ and registry additions.

It's basically all trial and error at the newbie level.
But, if you read alot around appDB and the forums; then you will pick up terminology and better debug skills.

[karacho]

winetricks does things automatically you otherwise have to do manually. for excample if you install direct3d it copies the native dll files into windows/system23 and puts the correct registry entries in the registry for you.
it's often usefull tu just rely on winetricks to install things like this because the native installer for .net for example doesn't work always and wineskin kinda wrapps the installation for you.

it also can du things like wine specific settings you usually have to write manually into the registry (like changing the renderer from opengl to gdi)

[NSObject]

karacho, on 24 January 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

winetricks does things automatically you otherwise have to do manually. for excample if you install direct3d it copies the native dll files into windows/system23 and puts the correct registry entries in the registry for you.
it's often usefull tu just rely on winetricks to install things like this because the native installer for .net for example doesn't work always and wineskin kinda wrapps the installation for you.

it also can du things like wine specific settings you usually have to write manually into the registry (like changing the renderer from opengl to gdi)

why would you restate my post?

[HiPhish]

Information at the AppDB is usually outdated if it's not a very popular game, for example Alien Shooter is rated garbage but I got it working flawlessly. My advice is to either start with the newest Wine engine or the newest Crossover engine (the one with CX or CXG in the name). Then see what issues you have and compare to the information ath the AppDB, see what Winetricks were used and what settings were changed. If you still have issues, then work your way down the engine versions. Wine is still heavily in development, so often one thing gets fixed, while another one gets broken.

All engines with even number (i. e. only 1.2.x at the moment) are considered stable, while the odd numbered ones (1.1.x and 1.3.x) are alpha. For us this is not that important, since we can change our Wine version on the fly.

if everythign fails you will simply have to accept defeat. Some games cannot be run in Wine. Yet.

NSObject, on 24 January 2012 - 11:42 PM, said:

why would you restate my post?

Maybe because it's more specific and helpful?

[cluthz]

HiPhish, on 25 January 2012 - 07:31 AM, said:

Information at the AppDB is usually outdated if it's not a very popular game, for example Alien Shooter is rated garbage but I got it working flawlessly. My advice is to either start with the newest Wine engine or the newest Crossover engine (the one with CX or CXG in the name). Then see what issues you have and compare to the information ath the AppDB, see what Winetricks were used and what settings were changed. If you still have issues, then work your way down the engine versions. Wine is still heavily in development, so often one thing gets fixed, while another one gets broken.

All engines with even number (i. e. only 1.2.x at the moment) are considered stable, while the odd numbered ones (1.1.x and 1.3.x) are alpha. For us this is not that important, since we can change our Wine version on the fly.

if everythign fails you will simply have to accept defeat. Some games cannot be run in Wine. Yet.

Maybe because it's more specific and helpful?

Make an account and update if there is outdated info!
It can help other people.

[karacho]

NSObject, on 24 January 2012 - 11:42 PM, said:

why would you restate my post?

to get more concret for newbies. didn't want to drown you out.

[HiPhish]

cluthz, on 25 January 2012 - 12:20 PM, said:

Make an account and update if there is outdated info!
It can help other people.

As far as I know they only accept real Wine, no 3rd Part applications (except Winetricks), so I wouldn't want to write the wrong stuff.

[doh123]

Normal Wineskin engines are stock unmodified Wine. Results of how it works can be translated into normal Wine terms without even mentioning Wineskin, as to a rating and how it operates isn't based on Wineskin itself.

[DankoB]

...in fact if you mention you're using a front end to Wine such as Wineskin the Wine developer's won't even give you the time of day.

[Nowayback]

But let's say I want to port a windows application. Let's say MediaMonkey. It's a music player with a handfull of great utilities like finding double songs, getting the ID3 tag information from the file name, etc.

What engine would you need then? Or is there no difference in engine and are all the engines usable for games and applications?

And thanks for the information so far. It helps a lot to understand it!

[karacho]

there is no split in wine like the commercial crossover is making. as you can see heresomeone already tried it on lion with 1.3.27 and it's working fine (except usb). so you can try the newest engine as well and check if it works. just try

[doh123]

The newest version is usually the best to go with, currently WS8Wine1.3.37 ... but sometimes you need older ones.  They are all Wine builds, they do not have differences other than that newer builds have newer features and different bugs.  Sometimes newer features cause problems, sometimes they fix problems... differences in bugs are also a factor.  There is not specific answer as to which to use... I typically go for the smallest engine size that actually runs the program ok.  I try WS8Wine1.2.3ICE first since ICE shares engine files to save space... as long as you have 2 or more that use it.

[HiPhish]

doh123, on 25 January 2012 - 05:35 PM, said:

Normal Wineskin engines are stock unmodified Wine. Results of how it works can be translated into normal Wine terms without even mentioning Wineskin, as to a rating and how it operates isn't based on Wineskin itself.

So I can just post my experience, never mention Wineskin, and everything is fine?

[doh123]

HiPhish, on 27 January 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

So I can just post my experience, never mention Wineskin, and everything is fine?

if you can translate it to normal Wine terminology, and your using a stock Wine build... I don't see the problem.

[karacho]

i often see users writing their experience in the appdb but of course they mention that they are using wineskin. you should mention this, too. otherwise the developers can't recreate the possible problems or compatibility issues.

[Nowayback]

karacho, on 26 January 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

there is no split in wine like the commercial crossover is making. as you can see heresomeone already tried it on lion with 1.3.27 and it's working fine (except usb). so you can try the newest engine as well and check if it works. just try

All tough it was a hypothetical app, I  thank you for the link. Because now I have another question.
In the appDB the user says that he installed a bunch of extra features, like vc6run. How does he (or she) know that he (or she) needs to use that? And what does it do?

[doh123]

some people find out what to need through trial and error... some people because you look at the log files and figure out certain dll errors and search how to get MS versions of those dlls installed...

[karacho]

Nowayback, on 30 January 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

All tough it was a hypothetical app, I thank you for the link. Because now I have another question. In the appDB the user says that he installed a bunch of extra features, like vc6run. How does he (or she) know that he (or she) needs to use that? And what does it do?

when there is a message in the winelog when you debug that says something like missing library "mfc42" or "msvcr60.dll"/"msvcp60.dll" or that a function there is not found it's likeley that you have to install vcrun6 because it's part of it. that's experience.
msvcr/p90.dll is a vcrun 2008 dll and so is msvcr/p80.dll a vcrun2006 dll...

get used to some debugging and search the winehq forums for the message...

[Nowayback]

Thank for the information! ;D

[krazykoala]

So, basically, just experience and looking at the appdb to hope someone else has figured out something that'll help you beforehand?

THanks.  The appdb is looking pretty helpful.

[doh123]

you start to learn over time as you get more experience getting more games to work.  I felt totally clueless when I started and I hope with the new forum here that all of my really old very stupid questions are no longer findable...