Windows games with video do not play

[Robhalfordfan]

Hello all

I am new to wine and Linux in general, I have been trying to most of my original old windows 95/98 games from its original discs running with wine via lutirs and mostly had success but there a few games that has videos that play in the game where I can hear it trying to play but skips it and been trying find a way to get them to play, try different settings and wine dlls but no luck so far.

games that have video in game... so far

-A bug's life action game - 1999 - not 100% sure what the videos are - Installs DirectX 6 and windows media player and codec 5.2
-Cluedo - Murder at Blackwell Grange - 1998 - AVI video - Installs DirectX 5 and DirectX Media runtime 5.1 (but dx media runtime fails to install)

I properly have more games like that

the avi videos play in my linux via media player no problem - don't think it a codec issue

I am using Linux mint 22.1 with wineHQ Staging (latest version) and lutris (deb package - latest version)

any help would be appreciated

[Baustein]

Wine 10.x has some bugs, first thing I’d try would be the previous major version.

With media playback it’s complicated, because the best is often a mix of Wine’s built-in DLLs and a couple of necessary ones on the “native” side. You probably shouldn’t allow the games to update DirectX, because this will install more than you need. So make a clean wineprefix/bottle and use winetricks.

Considerations for the playback issue:
 - it may be a codec issue (run “winetricks list-download |& grep codec”, this should hint you at what verb you might need to install. Start with regular Windows ones, if it’s not enough, try more). Also “winetricks ffdshow”;
 - or the issue may be in the lacking of some particular direct media dll. This is the trickiest part of stuffing a wineprefix with DirectX. Some videos would not play without native dlls, that are only installed as a bunch and hence installing them is generally not recommended. To add them anyway, run winetricks with “directsound”, “directplay” and, maybe, “directshow”. The latter one is probably not needed, stick with the first two first. For each of these verbs “winetricks” will install a bunch of dlls (watch the logs to know, which) and set them as “native”, but with some this may *break* the game, if the .exe would try to load the native versions. So you’ll probably have to use WINEDLLOVERRIDES and set “bad” DLLs to built-in (Wine wiki is out there →). Typical culprits are dsound and dswave. Ah, one more thing. Instead of installing “directshow” bunch, try “winetricks quartz” first. It can add quartz.dll separately of the rest, so there’s less hassle with “directshow”.
 - DX1-8 games may not run well via Vulkan, so you may want to get wine to use WINED3D. Or use dgVoodoo2 to convey it to Vulkan via DX12 API.

[deepforest]

Hello. I am also interesting running retro games at Linux.
My humble experience, for some old games better use native Windows 98 via Virtual Box.

ps also i can test here some of two games that you mentioned

[Baustein]

About the direct media dlls (in case it’s them, that are missing or not working),

Code: Select all

$ WINEDEBUG=+loaddll wine …

will show which exactly DLLs the program tries to load.

My humble experience, for some old games better use native Windows 98 via Virtual Box.

Yes, that’s because running applications in 16-bit addressing mode safely is complicated on modern Linux kernels. This might require turning on some sysctl options or even a custom kernel. If you see messages like “modify_ldt: Operartion is not permitted”, that’s probably it. I perfectly understand the desire to run exactly what’s on an owned compact disk, but those really old programs may not run well in Wine. I’d look, however, whether receiving an updated copy, that runs on modern Windows, is possible (say, Disciples binary from 2000 has less problems, than an earlier version). Some games have native Linux ports (Arx Fatalis, Caesar III, SiN…), visiting PCGamingWiki may bring some more ideas.

On “Bug’s life” page it says that the game may need to have GDI hardware acceleration disabled, and you can do it with dxwrapper’s compatibility mode, the DDrawCompatDisableGDIHook in particular. (But that’s about the fps issue, not the media playback.)

[Robhalfordfan]

Wine 10.x has some bugs, first thing I’d try would be the previous major version.

With media playback it’s complicated, because the best is often a mix of Wine’s built-in DLLs and a couple of necessary ones on the “native” side. You probably shouldn’t allow the games to update DirectX, because this will install more than you need. So make a clean wineprefix/bottle and use winetricks.

Considerations for the playback issue:
 - it may be a codec issue (run “winetricks list-download |& grep codec”, this should hint you at what verb you might need to install. Start with regular Windows ones, if it’s not enough, try more). Also “winetricks ffdshow”;
 - or the issue may be in the lacking of some particular direct media dll. This is the trickiest part of stuffing a wineprefix with DirectX. Some videos would not play without native dlls, that are only installed as a bunch and hence installing them is generally not recommended. To add them anyway, run winetricks with “directsound”, “directplay” and, maybe, “directshow”. The latter one is probably not needed, stick with the first two first. For each of these verbs “winetricks” will install a bunch of dlls (watch the logs to know, which) and set them as “native”, but with some this may *break* the game, if the .exe would try to load the native versions. So you’ll probably have to use WINEDLLOVERRIDES and set “bad” DLLs to built-in (Wine wiki is out there →). Typical culprits are dsound and dswave. Ah, one more thing. Instead of installing “directshow” bunch, try “winetricks quartz” first. It can add quartz.dll separately of the rest, so there’s less hassle with “directshow”.
 - DX1-8 games may not run well via Vulkan, so you may want to get wine to use WINED3D. Or use dgVoodoo2 to convey it to Vulkan via DX12 API.

ok i will give what you mention a try and see if that help

There some old windows 95/98 games that actually requires directX to be installed successfully in order to even finish installing the game - one come to mind right away is bugs bunny: lost in time.

I also try and manage to get goosebumps escape to horrorland running perfect as it needs to have dgvoodoo2 turned on, also rugrats adventure game and that asks to install quicktime 3 during install and works no issues.

have try dlloverides and confused on what it does and how it works also the symbolic link to dll files like for dgvoodoo2 for example is a little annoying as I had turn off dgvoodoo2 to use the ddrawcompat for odd games that have a little trouble. I am assuming the dlloverrides look on prefix windows system folder for its native dlls, if it does using ddrawcompat's ddraw file will overwrite the dgvoodoo2 symbolic link but the if the dgvoodoo2 is turned on it will overwrite the the ddrawcompat ddraw file and ect.

[Robhalfordfan]

Hello. I am also interesting running retro games at Linux.
My humble experience, for some old games better use native Windows 98 via Virtual Box.

ps also i can test here some of two games that you mentioned

if you can test, that would be good as i mange to get 4 windows 95/98 working fully all using their original discs as iso files

[Robhalfordfan]

About the direct media dlls (in case it’s them, that are missing or not working),

Code: Select all

$ WINEDEBUG=+loaddll wine …

will show which exactly DLLs the program tries to load.

My humble experience, for some old games better use native Windows 98 via Virtual Box.

Yes, that’s because running applications in 16-bit addressing mode safely is complicated on modern Linux kernels. This might require turning on some sysctl options or even a custom kernel. If you see messages like “modify_ldt: Operartion is not permitted”, that’s probably it. I perfectly understand the desire to run exactly what’s on an owned compact disk, but those really old programs may not run well in Wine. I’d look, however, whether receiving an updated copy, that runs on modern Windows, is possible (say, Disciples binary from 2000 has less problems, than an earlier version). Some games have native Linux ports (Arx Fatalis, Caesar III, SiN…), visiting PCGamingWiki may bring some more ideas.

On “Bug’s life” page it says that the game may need to have GDI hardware acceleration disabled, and you can do it with dxwrapper’s compatibility mode, the DDrawCompatDisableGDIHook in particular. (But that’s about the fps issue, not the media playback.)

I will try that see what it says and what wouid gdi hardware disabled be in dll list of wine and fps of game runs absolutely fine, it just the videos