Heroes of Might and Magic 2 won't start

[Zovits]

I just tried HOMM2 with Wine. I run Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and have Wine 1.1.41.
First I started Autorun.exe in the _AUTORUN folder. The Wine "desktop" apperared, an so did the frame of the application's window. The sound worked perfectly, even when mousing over one of the "icons". But there was no picture. The window's content was "copied" from the desktop, and stayed the same regardless of any action. (I think this might be an issue with window refreshing, and/or drawing.)
Not giving up, I fiddled with the graphics settings, with no notable result. After turning off the "desktop", the window copied it's contents from the window beneath it (Nautilus in this case).
Then I started setup.exe (the one in the CD's root). It did not produce any visible results. Using the system monitor I could see two wine... processes starting and ending promptly.
After this I tried _SETUP/setup.exe. This version would start up normally, showing the InstallShield tool's first few panels. However, after giving the installation directory, I got an error stating: "General file transfer error.Please check your target location and try again. Error number:-1." The target location was Wine's Program Files directory, and the next time Wine's C: root. Both gave the same error message.
Then I gave HEROES2/heroes2w.exe a try. It worked just right, except it did not "see" the CD in the drive. (Well, there was no CD, since the original was rendered inoperational a long time ago, and only an iso image remained, that was mounted at the time) And no CD means no game either.
For the last try, I started /HEROES2/editor2w.exe. It started, it worked perfectly, until I opened and messed around (i.e. filled in the textboxes) at the specs menu. Then the mouse pointer seemed to "shift" the pixels a bit after passing over them. And when I moved the pointer to the bottom of the screen, I got this error: "DirectDraw error: 'DDERR_INVALIDRECT ' File: 'D:heroes2/Editor/wingraph.cpp' Line:265"

I also tried running autorun.exe (the one with the frame and the copied visuals) from terminal and capturing the outputs.
This was the result:
err:alsa:ALSA_CheckSetVolume Could not find 'PCM Playback Volume' element
err:alsa:ALSA_CheckSetVolume Could not find 'PCM Playback Volume' element
fixme:mixer:ALSA_MixerInit No master control found on ATI IXP Modem, disabling mixer
fixme:msvideo:DrawDibRealize (0x1, 0x2b4, 0), stub
ALSA lib pcm.c:7228:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
err:mmio:MMIO_ParseExtA No . in szFileName: "\x07"
errwodPlayer_WriteMaxFrags Error in writing wavehdr. Reason: Erőforrás átmenetileg nem érhető el
{This last sentence (the reason) means: The resource is temporarily unavailable}
{This exact line (err:wave...) repeats 10155 times}
ALSA lib pcm.c:7228:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7228:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
err:mmio:MMIO_ParseExtA No . in szFileName: "\x07"

Any help would be appreciated.

[Rico]

It could be the version of homm2 which could make troubles. Please have a look in the appdb. Which version do you have?

Also please try to run the setup.exe from the cd within the directory.
cd /media/cdrom
wine setup.exe

Does the installer install fine or does it fail in some way? Do you get any suspicious messages?

[Zovits]

Thanks for the reply. My version is 1.0 Original (without any expansions).
I mounted the iso image to /media/cdrom, and tried to get Wine to run setup.exe from there, but it exited without giving any errors or showing anything (like a window, or even Wine's desktop).

[vitamin]

Then I gave HEROES2/heroes2w.exe a try. It worked just right, except it did not "see" the CD in the drive. (Well, there was no CD, since the original was rendered inoperational a long time ago, and only an iso image remained, that was mounted at the time) And no CD means no game either.

That is correct. You need original CD to play this game. ISO is not enough to work with safedisk copy protection.

[Zovits]

Thanks for the replies.
I managed to get it working by mounting the iso image to /media/cdrom, and creating a symlink in Wine's dosdevices folder that pointed to the cdrom.

So now the game works mostly OK, but there is another interesting issue.

The game definitely has sounds, like the world map's ambient noises, or the battle sound effects, but upon entering a town, the background music is not played.
In the sound settings menu the sounds are set to Midi, and it can not even be altered ("Unable to set up CD stereo music. Your CD player might be in use by another program, or your sound driver might not support CD stereo.").
This problem persists even after reinstalling the game.

During this, Wine writes these lines to the console:

Code: Select all

err:alsa:ALSA_CheckSetVolume Could not find 'PCM Playback Volume' element
err:alsa:ALSA_CheckSetVolume Could not find 'PCM Playback Volume' element
fixme:mixer:ALSA_MixerInit No master control found on ATI IXP Modem, disabling mixer
fixme:gl_compat:add_gl_compat_wrappers GL implementation supports GL_ARB_fragment_program but not GL_EXT_fog_coord
fixme:gl_compat:add_gl_compat_wrappers The fog coord emulation will most likely fail
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x32f674,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:x11drv:X11DRV_desktop_SetCurrentMode Cannot change screen BPP from 32 to 8
fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverBufferImpl_SetVolumePan (0x16b4b0,0x16b3b0): stub

[vitamin]

The game definitely has sounds, like the world map's ambient noises, or the battle sound effects, but upon entering a town, the background music is not played.
In the sound settings menu the sounds are set to Midi, and it can not even be altered ("Unable to set up CD stereo music. Your CD player might be in use by another program, or your sound driver might not support CD stereo.").

To have midi music you need to use ALSA and midi emulator such as tmidity.

As for CD music - ISO files are data only and can not contain any audio tracks.

[Zovits]

Thanks a lot, installing tmidity solved the problem.