BioShock Forum

the game installs and plays on alu macbook (late 2008) Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and latest crossover games build.

Wine Direct3D settings:
"VideoMemorySize"="xxx" (where xxx is your GPU RAM in Mb), "VertexShaderMode"="hardware"
"DirectDrawRenderer"="gdi" ( opengl works as well though)
"OffscreenRenderingMode"="fbo" (this may be default)
"UseGLSL"="disabled"
(these settings are not nailed in place, change them to what works best for you)

Wine DirectInput settings (as mentioned in another post)
"MouseWarpOverride"="force".

This being said, in game resolution is 800X600 for me, every graphic option set to "OFF", except Force Global Lighting and textures (set on high). You may want to check for some advanced tweaks
http://www.tweakguides.com/Bioshock_1.html
In particular, if there is a bit of shuttering set "AvoidHitches"="True" in bioshock.ini
All in all, looks more like a bronze or silver to me.

regards,
mihai

Have you been able to run it without crashing to the desktop?

It runs pretty well for me, but crashes every so-often. I can't reproduce it reliably though. When it does crash it takes the save games with it so I had to write a command line utility to back them up every 10 minutes so I could test the game out.

hi,

it does crash to desktop (memory issue?... wild guess here). I noticed that if you reduce texture quality and screen resolution it does not crash any more (well, at least for my 1-2 hours of casual gaming). Saved games are ok though, not sure why you have that problem. Oh..., and I ended up using opengl as renderer, feels a better framerate-wise.

Interesting...

I'll test with those registry and lower graphics settings with Activity Monitor running in the background to see if I can glean some info from that.

Still crashing to desktop, leaving wineloader running in the background (the only way to kill it is via the Activity Monitor or 'kill').

Using the registry settings above the save games seem to stick around, but the game settings seem to get reset following the crash. So, it's running - but I still wouldn't give it a Bronze. Provisional-bronze maybe ;).

what machine are you running on? (GPU and RAM). full screen/virtual desktop?
although it may be default, set the launch option to -dx9. Also it may be worth while changing a few things in bioshock.ini: under [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] you can set Use8bitBackBuffer=True (although this may require setting OffscreenRenderingMode=backbuffer, something I have not tested. On the wineHQ forums "OffscreenRenderingMode"="fbo" is highly recommended). As to my first post, I found that the Force Global Lighting option does not help much unless you are struggling for FPS.
You may also run the game with the "Create log file" enabled, just to see some error output in a easy to read format (though I found that easy to read does not amount to easy to understand :))

Besides a crash every now and then, the 1.1 version works fine for me in 8.1.3 on 64-bit linux at 1920x1080 with the graphics settings at high. Playing for a few hours is usually not a problem. A tiny problem: the fullscreen game window is moved a bit off-screen to the top. Like perhaps 20px or so. But I hardly notice that when playing.

System: Phenom X4 955, 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 4850.

To get the resolution to this I changed it in both default.ini in the install folder and the config file in the profile folder. I have yet to try out the mousewarp thing. Doing a 360 every now and then is not a big problem for me.

I'd say this one is silver, going for gold.

After the crashes are you noticing any data loss, as far as game settings or saves?

Did you use any of the registry settings outlined at the top of this thread?

Hey,

it looks like your problem is more on the lines of this (see Comments section)
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=9320&iTestingId=40319

A few additions to my initial post:
"VideoDriver"="nv4_disp.dll" for Nvidia GPU/ "VideoDriver"="ati2dvag.dll" for ATI GPU.
If the game settings revert to default after a crash you may want to replace bioshockpath/Builds/Release/Default.ini with Bioshock.ini from Applications Data and bioshockpath/Builds/Release/DefUser.ini with User.ini(make sure you rename the default .ini files to something like _bkp or back them up some other way) after you settled for the configuration of you choice.
If you are not using the Steam version, make sure you install directx9 and vcrun2005sp1. If you are using the Steam version paste -dx9 to launch settings.

mihaimanu wrote:

Wine DirectInput settings (as mentioned in another post)
"MouseWarpOverride"="force".

This being said, in game resolution is 800X600 for me, every graphic
option set to "OFF", except Force Global Lighting and textures (set
on high). You may want to check for some advanced tweaks
http://www.tweakguides.com/Bioshock_1.html
In particular, if there is a bit of shuttering set
"AvoidHitches"="True" in bioshock.ini
All in all, looks more like a bronze or silver to me.

regards,
mihai

I would agree with the Bronze rating. I have tested this using the Bioshock demo downloaded via the officially supported Steam bottle using CXGames 8.1.4

I'm running ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 with the latest official ubuntu kernel. I installed crossover games using the 32 bit .deb

I found the mouse control issue the most annoying, and so implemented the above registry hack.
For those (like me) not au-fait with hacking the wine registry, this is how I put the above MouseWarpOverride key.

Applications --> Crossover Games --> Configuration --> Manage Bottles tab
Click on winxp (default) bottle - this is the bottle containing the officially supported steam, then click configure.
click on control panel tab, click Run and type regedit in the dialog box, press enter.

Drill down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Software --> Wine --> AppDefaults
Right click on AppDefaults folder and select New --> Key

Type "Bioshock.exe" without the quotes.
right-click on this new key and create another new key, this time call it "DirectInput"

This time go to the right half of the application with three columns - Name, Type, Data.
Right click in the whitespace on this side and select New --> String Value
Call it "MouseWarpOverride" and press enter
You can now right-click on this value and select Modify, under Value type "force" (again no quotes).

You can now exit regedit and your changes will be saved. You can also close the subwindows that got you here.

Next time you use the Steam bottle and run Bioshock via this bottle, cxgames should apply the mouse settings which does make it more playable.

Additional tweaks that I used which can be entered via the steam interface under Properties when Bioshock is selected.

-window -dx9

This forces windowed mode and disables directx 10 features.

I had to run the demo in lowest quality graphics to get a smooth framerate, but it still looked amazing to me.

Mmh, I can't even get it to install (from original game DVD).
Install runs through up to the point where it tries to download "newest patch", then says: "No DVD in drive".
Mac OS 10.6.2, MBP 15", Nvidia 9600GT