Baldurs Gate Throne of Bhaal won't launch

[imatechguy]

According to the AppDB it should work just fine but I'm having some problems and the search for the forums on "Baldur", "Bhaal" and "ToB" give no results.

The game installed just fine. All the community mods installed fine. The game config file runs fine except for the display setting sections; after a the automated setting test I do not get the popup asking if I saw the three boxes. I've got an image of the ToB disk mounted because the .exe wouldn't see the actual disk in my optical drive initially. I also have tried the compatibility settings in Wine from XP to Win98.

When I try to start the game I get the initial load screen where I click the "Play" button but the menu screen goes away and I'm left with a blank "desktop" area, indefinitely. If I click on the x to close the window I do get the popup asking if I really want to quite because "Boo will miss you". Clicking the "no" option returns me to the blank desktop and the "yes" option closes the window.

To launch the game I open the Terminal and type:

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wine "/home/dad/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Black Isle/BG2/baldur.exe"

Which causes this message to display:

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Warning: could not find DOS drive for current working directory '/home/dad', starting in the Windows directory.

Once I click the "Play" button I get this error:

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fixme:wave:wodPlayer_Reset shouldn't have headers left 

After that my prompt comes back for a about 2 seconds before this error displays:

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fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x33857c,0x00000000), stub! 

Immediately followed by this error:

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fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverBufferImpl_SetVolumePan (0x13a9e8,0x13bf48): stub    

And finally I get this error repeated over and over again:

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err:d3d_surface:IWineD3DBaseSurfaceImpl_CreateDIBSection CreateDIBSection failed! 

I'm at a loss here because NWN2 works fine and the only real difference in the launch process is that I have the No-CD patch for NWN2. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[vitamin]

And finally I get this error repeated over and over again:

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err:d3d_surface:IWineD3DBaseSurfaceImpl_CreateDIBSection CreateDIBSection failed! 

Makes sure you disabled compiz (the 3d screen affects).
Try with virtual desktop mode (winecfg -> graphics tab).

[imatechguy]

Thanks Vitamin.

To address your points: I don't believe I'm running Compiz, my default desktop window manager is Kwin and I don't have anything running other than the effects being enabled. So I went ahead and unchecked the "Enable Desktop Effects" box in the System Settings GUI. Upon retrying to launch the game I got the same error codes as before.

I also had already checked the "Emulate a Virtual Desktop" tab.

I'm not sure if it's a new error or I just hadn't noticed before but I have now noticed that I am getting the following error once I put the focus back on the Terminal window.:

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err:ole:CoUninitialize Mismatched CoUninitialize

Even changing all my settings back to what they were before I still get this new error.

Something else that occurred to me, it may or may not help, is that I can not launch Baldur's Gate from a shortcut like I can NWN2. The only way I can sucessfully launch it is with the Terminal; otherwise it auto closes before even loading the WINE Desktop environment.

Ideas?

EDIT: Because I forgot to mention this in the first post and it just might matter; I'm running openSUSE 11.1 and WINE 1.1.9

[James McKenzie]

imatechguy wrote:

According to the AppDB it should work just fine but I'm having some problems and the search for the forums on "Baldur", "Bhaal" and "ToB" give no results.

The game installed just fine. All the community mods installed fine. The game config file runs fine except for the display setting sections; after a the automated setting test I do not get the popup asking if I saw the three boxes. I've got an image of the ToB disk mounted because the .exe wouldn't see the actual disk in my optical drive initially. I also have tried the compatibility settings in Wine from XP to Win98.

Three questions come to mind immediately:

What Linux Distro are you using?
What is the architecture you are trying to run this on? CPU, Amount of
Memory, Video Card and Drivers?
Lastly and most importantly, what version of Wine are you using?

There were problems with Wine 1.1.12 that were addressed in Wine
1.1.13. This problem may be one of them.

James McKenzie

[imatechguy]

Three questions come to mind immediately:

What Linux Distro are you using?
What is the architecture you are trying to run this on? CPU, Amount of
Memory, Video Card and Drivers?
Lastly and most importantly, what version of Wine are you using?

There were problems with Wine 1.1.12 that were addressed in Wine
1.1.13. This problem may be one of them.

James McKenzie

Distro is openSUSE 11.1 32-bit
CPU - E6750
RAM - 2Gb
GPU - 7950GT with nVidia proprietary drivers v177.82
WINE - v1.1.9

Something that did come to mind is if there is anything that was part of the process getting NWN2 to run (probably that I did incorrectly) could be interfering with Baldur's Gate running?

Thank you.

[dimesio]

To launch the game I open the Terminal and type:

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wine "/home/dad/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Black Isle/BG2/baldur.exe"

You're starting it incorrectly. First cd to the directory where the exe is located.

Something that did come to mind is if there is anything that was part of the process getting NWN2 to run (probably that I did incorrectly) could be interfering with Baldur's Gate running?

If you set any overrides for NWN2, make sure they are only for NWN2, not set globally. Overrides that make one app work can make another app not work.

[imatechguy]

You're starting it incorrectly. First cd to the directory where the exe is located.

If you set any overrides for NWN2, make sure they are only for NWN2, not set globally. Overrides that make one app work can make another app not work.

I had in fact set overrides for NWN2, and duplicated them for "Global Settings"; so I deleted the overrides from the Global Setting. Tried to start Baldur's Gate from both the shortcut in the Application Launcher (Kmenu) as well as the Terminal and got the same results as described before for each scenario.

So in the Terminal I cd'd to the correct directory as suggested and tried

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wine baldur.exe

as well as

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wine BGMain.exe

Again the same set of errors as initially posted were returned.
I guess it possible something just got borked in my install, it's been known to happen in Windows. So unless somebody's got a better idea at this point I'm thinking I should just try a fresh install and go from there.

Thank you.

[imatechguy]

I think I just confirmed it's not the install. I used a tip posted in another thread to move my working ~/.wine directory temporarily to create a new one for testing (thanks to austin987 for that by the way).

So starting with a fresh WINE install I installed Baldur's Gate SoA followed by ToB and the Bonus Content (yes the patch too) and before adding in any mods tried launching the game... Same issue as last time. I get the Play/Configure/Readme/etc. menu screen and I can click Configure and it brings up the configuration menu just fine. Everything there works except getting the video setting confirmation pop-up after the display shows the test color squares. If I try to launch the game, then just like before the dialog screens disappear and only the desktop is shown. If I close the desktop I get the standard "are you sure, boo will miss you" pop-up.

I did get one new error this time though and two of the same including that last one that just keeps repeating. It was suggested that I shut down Compiz, but I wasn't running that so I went into the configuration menu to disable desktop effects, then typed these two commands in the terminal:

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kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false

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kwin --replace

then I logged off then back in again so as I understand it that should have shut down Kwin compositing so there should be no interferrence there, right? Except that yielded no difference in the error code output.

Below is the new error code and both previous ones that are still displaying when I try to run the game:

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fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x33857c,0x00000000), stub!

and this one again

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fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverBufferImpl_SetVolumePan (0x13a9c0,0x13bf20): stub

and this one just keeps repeating over and over again

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err:d3d_surface:IWineD3DBaseSurfaceImpl_CreateDIBSection CreateDIBSection failed!

I'd really like to get the Baldur's Gate series working as that and NWN2 are my main games and the only real reason I'm still holding on to Windows.

Thank you.

[imatechguy]

Small update.

Turning on 3d Acceleration, per some google searching, got rid of that last error code I note above, the one that just repeated over and over again; and now the game actually starts and runs. I just ran through the intro though so I'm hoping it works okay.

The other errors are still there and it seems that when sounds play at area transistions I get this error code dumped into the Terminal window.

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fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverBufferImpl_SetVolumePan (0x157c38,0x20db88): stub

Thank you.

[James Mckenzie]

imatechguy <[email protected]> wrote:

Sent: Jan 27, 2009 6:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Wine] Re: Baldurs Gate Throne of Bhaal won't launch

Small update.

Turning on 3d Acceleration, per some google searching, got rid of that last error code I note
above, the one that just repeated over and over again; and now the game actually starts and runs.
I just ran through the intro though so I'm hoping it works okay.

Can you update the Applications Database with your experiences?

The other errors are still there and it seems that when sounds play at area transistions I get this error code dumped into the Terminal window.

Code:
fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverBufferImpl_SetVolumePan (0x157c38,0x20db88): stub

This means that the function is not implemented. This can be ignored unless sound is going away when this happens. If sound does stop, please open a bug report.

James McKenzie

[imatechguy]

@ James Mckenzie - New Appdb submission completed. With regard to a feature/function not being implemented, something to do with sound in this case, how did you identify it as that instead of something I can and should fix?


Thank you.

[James McKenzie]

imatechguy wrote:

@ James Mckenzie - New Appdb submission completed. With regard to a feature/function not being implemented, something to do with sound in this case, how did you identify it as that instead of something I can and should fix?

I'maTechGuy:

lines in terminal output that start with Fixme: are functions that are
not implemented, just enough code is added to allow programs to run or
partially implemented, that is some functionality is there but not all.
If you are a programmer, you can look at MSDN and other sources and try
to figure out how to code in the functions. We do not allow/permit
anyone who has looked at Windows source code or who has reverse
engineered Windows to provide code for those sections. This is to
prevent legal problems with Microsoft or other patent holders.
Implemented functions change with each release of Wine in the
development branch. Wine 1.0 and 1.0.1 provide the same set of
functions, 1.0.1 fixes known problems with 1.0. There are plans to
release Wine 1.2 in the future (maybe the next few months if all goes
well) with a much more robust set of functions than 1.0 (DirectX 9 for
example is more completely implemented in the development branch than in
Wine 1.0)

If you find a problem with running a program, a bug report or vote on an
existing bug report is much appreciated.

James McKenzie

[imatechguy]

Awesome explanation James thanks!

As for the programming... I think I'll leave that for all the guys/gals that are smarter and more experienced than I am.