Spore - Installs, runs, but graphically glitched

[VoltManEXE]

I really hate to bring back such an old game, but I'm really at a loss here. I keep seeing plenty of screenshots and videos of Spore running very well under Linux, and I haven't been able to figure out what my problem is. In fact, I've only seen my problem in one other place, but it is a dead topic without any answers.

I'm able to start it, but the spinning galaxy with the planets does not show at all, as well as the text being all black and blocky. I've read on the AppDB that it is required to override the DirectX dll's in order to get the game to work, but doing so has not helped at all (I followed the guide here to do so). I've tried all versions of wine from 1.1 to 1.5, as well as PlayOnLinux 4.1.8. The -safe tag does nothing. I have the actual DVD, no cracks, and I'm using the serial key straight off the box.

I'm running 64-bit LMDE and my sources.list is hooked up to both the standard Linux Mint repo's (which contain virtually nothing useful) and Debian's Wheezy repos. I'm using an unmodified HP Pavilion dv6-3025dx Entertainment Notebook which has an ATI Radeon HD 4200 video card, using the xserver-xorg-video-ati open-source drivers (the non-free fglrx drivers are not compatible for me). I am able to run other 3d-rendered games on this system, such as Minecraft.

I would post a log of the game running from the terminal, but the majority of it runs off the screen, and " > log" doesn't save the output correctly. Let me know if I should look for something specific while wine executes the game, and if I need to get additional info from the terminal, just say the word.

This game was incredible back when I first got it, and now that I've migrated to Linux, I really want to try and get this running.
Thanks!

[dimesio]

Installing all of directx is not recommended, and even if it were, outside howtos are not supported here.

The last four test reports for Spore 1.0 rate it platinum, so no tweaks should be needed. However, most platinum ratings for games in the AppDB are from users with Nvidia cards using the proprietary drivers. ATI cards have lots of problems in Wine.

[VoltManEXE]

Installing all of directx is not recommended, and even if it were, outside howtos are not supported here.

The last four test reports for Spore 1.0 rate it platinum, so no tweaks should be needed. However, most platinum ratings for games in the AppDB are from users with Nvidia cards using the proprietary drivers. ATI cards have lots of problems in Wine.

Yes, I understand that you shouldn't install DirectX because it messes with things, and that it isn't supported here due to Microsoft owning it, but I referred to that page because this AppDB page says that it "needs DirectX overrides." Does this mean that that AppDB page should be edited/taken down? Either way, it didn't help, so either I'm doing it wrong, or it just doesn't work.

Anyway, is there really nothing I can do with my graphics card? I mean, there must be something I can do to work with it, right? What if I got the proprietary drivers working on my system somehow, like by using a lower kernel?

[dimesio]

The reference to directx is in a single test report for a very old version of Wine. Test reports are filed by ordinary users, and should not be taken as "official" advice. The howto written by the app maintainer says nothing about directx.

Proprietary drivers are usually what's recommended, though a lot of ATI users have been reporting problems with them lately (not just in Wine, but in general). But it's worth a try.

[VoltManEXE]

What is the possibility that it could be another issue? Let's pretend I was using an nvidia card; what troubleshooting steps could be taken then? Most of the AppDB pages do give it a Platinum rating, but they are for the most part running either Ubuntu or ArchLinux. ATI cards are a giant headache most of the time, but who's to say this wouldn't happen because of my distro, even with an nvidia card?

I want to try every troubleshooting step possible, and in the meantime, I'll see what I can do to get these drivers working, even if it means downgrading both my kernel and xserver.

[fitzsim]

I had the same problem on Fedora 17 and I solved it by installing libtxc_dxtn-1.0.0-2.fc17.i686. Try installing the equivalent Mint package. In Fedora libtxc_dxtn isn't installed automatically as a Wine dependency because of legal issues:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=909780

That's why I had to install it manually after installing the wine package.