Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum

Hi All,

I'm using Ubuntu Jaunty on a Dell XPS M1210 with Crossover Games and PyLotOR to try and run DDO. I have been able to install it all and have been as far as the server loading screen that follows the intro scenes. Both time that I was able to get that far I had to kill the app by restarting with ctrl-alt-del b/c I couldn't get access to a terminal to kill the process. The other times I've tried to get the game going it hangs just before the Turbine splash screen and I have to restart (or some of the time it brings up a force quite window, which is nicer than rebooting). I have tried different wine cfg options included:

1. with/without allowing gnome to manage the windows
2. with/without emulated desktop
3. combinations of the above

Has anyone else tried to get DDO going with Crossover Games on Jaunty (or any Ubuntu)? I was so excited that Crossover might ease my wine frustrations with the endless troubleshooting to get windows apps running. Perhaps I ought to give Eve a try again? Thanks,

Chris

My guess is that you are getting hit by the good old pulseaudio in jaunty was badly implemented problem.

Start up wine cfg and change your audio from ALSA to OSS, you'll probably lose sound in all cut-scenes but it will stop the conflict between pulse and CXGs ALSA. The other alternative is to kill pulseaudio (in a terminal type pulseaudio -k) before playing but you stand the change of it respawning (they obviously expected it to crash on a regular basis).

The good news is so far under Lucid pulse and CXG get along fine.

In my day, the response would have been, "Shoulda bought a Mac!"

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Thanks Alan - also thanks for the PyLotRO launcher! If you have some time I'm having some more difficulty. I've changed to OSS and I've been able to (somewhat) consistently get to the DDO loading new game data screen where it hangs while searching for logon server or connecting to authentication server depending on the attempt. When it hangs I call up a terminal and kill the DDO process. If I simulate a windows reboot I can repeat the whole process. What do you think is going on here? Is there a firewall in the windows bottle that I can deactivate, or perhaps is it a problem with iptables (though I can access the internet without a problem in other wine software)? I should mention that there is no output other than FINISHED in the log window for PyLoTRO after all is done. Thanks again,

Chris

New info... I've killed pulseaudio and taken 3D vertex shaders off (in an attempt to speed everything up). I can now consistently get to the loading screen where the authentication server is searched for. The loading bar displays zero progress and the system hangs on attempt 1 of 20. I've tried to connect without a firewall (flushed iptables) to no avail. I'm trying to figure out how to monitor wineloader/wineserver in netstat to see what's happening to the connection attempts, but I'm not sure how to find those in the netstat output. I *think they are coming up as;

tcp 1 1 LOCALIP:PORT 208-92-68-28.deploy:www LAST_ACK
tcp 0 1 LOCALIP:PORT 64.124.194.10.avail:www LAST_ACK

I can successfully ping the DDO server at GLS.DDO.com. Somewhere in all of this is the answer I'm sure. Any ideas??

There is one more thing to try before leaping into trying to find network problems, in your game directory you need to stick a copy of d3dx9_36.dll (ask you favourite search engine about it, I'm sure it will tell you where to find one ahem ). Some, but not all, graphics cards make use of a function that isn't properly in CXGs DirectX9 implementation yet, sticking that file in your game directory gets around that problem if that is the problem.

I don't play DDO so I don't know if where it hits the problem is any indication of what the problem is likely to be. I know you say you have killed pulseaudio but what have you got CXG set for Alsa or OSS? I'd stick with OSS as pulse can respawn itself and cause a crash.

I changed the audio settings in winecfg within the DDO bottle to OSS. I also added that .dll file to the game folder and still no joy. I'm still reaching the loading screen, but it hangs on "Loading New Game Data" while "Searching for logon server ... (Attempt 1 of 20)". I've also tried all this with and without the patch .dll active in the PyLotRO settings. Thanks for the toubleshooting Alan. If you have anymore ideas I'd really appreciate seeing them. Otherwise, the floor is open to anyone of course.

Chris

Chris Carleton wrote:

I changed the audio settings in winecfg within the DDO bottle to
OSS. I also added that .dll file to the game folder and still no
joy. I'm still reaching the loading screen, but it hangs on "Loading
New Game Data" while "Searching for logon server ... (Attempt 1 of
20)". I've also tried all this with and without the patch .dll
active in the PyLotRO settings. Thanks for the toubleshooting Alan.
If you have anymore ideas I'd really appreciate seeing them.
Otherwise, the floor is open to anyone of course.

Chris

I'm running Ubuntu Karmic. I hadn't been able to get DDO working in Wine on my own, no matter how many tips off the web I tried. I installed CG just for playing DDO, but didn't buy it until I was satisfied that I could play normally.

This may seem stupid to ask, but since you didn't specify - did you get it to patch ok? I've had times when I didn't notice that a new patch is out, ran without loading that latest patch, and it crashed in the loading screen.

When I first installed and got it patched, I was able to log in but only play for a few seconds before it would hang. At that point, I completely uninstalled pulseaudio from my system. It has given me a few headaches with other apps, but nothing I can't deal with. After that, it would run ok for a while, but it would still usually crash on me after anywhere from 5-15 minutes. That's when I started playing with other Wine settings. I've got audio using ALSA, and in graphics Vertex Shader Support set to none. It was still hanging though.

But what finally ended up resolving most of the problems for me was to lower most of the graphics settings from within the game options. I'm sure it doesn't look quite as cool on my system as on some people's systems, but I can now play for hours with no problems. If it will help, I'll try to remember to write down all of my in-game graphics settings next time I'm playing, and then will add them to this thread.

Mike

Thanks Mike, I'd appreciate having your settings. Also, I've just got to the stage where I'm wondering about the patch. I've been using the patch option in PyLotRO and I thought that is was up to date. However, I just finished setting my VRAM in regedit and figured I would try running the game in an emulated desktop since some post somewhere suggested it. I got as far as usual, but the game crashed after the Turbine splash screen with an error about not having the right version of the client and then the error log for PyLotRO indicated something about the OPENA32.DLL - similar to other threads on the subject. So, now I'm going to try and figure out how to get the game patched properly adn give it another go. I'll check the forum some more, but if you can remember where you got the patching instructions that would be handy. Thanks again,

Chris

Ah, I think I know the solution. Up until very recently DDOs version of patchclient.dll didn't expose the patch function that PyLotRO needs. If you look in the tips & tricks tab there should be a link to a working version of patchclient.dll, just drop that into your game directory and try patching.

The first thing it does will probably be to replace that file but the replacement file should work fine but you might need to run patch twice the first time just to make sure.

It was the patch. DDO now works on my system beautifully - I don't mind the slightly lower res graphics. Thanks for all the help everyone, and Alan especially to you for the loader. So, I'm not sure if it matters, but using Codeweavers Crossover Games on a Dell XPS M1210 that is running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) I had success with the following notes:

1. must use latest patch.dll
2. kill pulseaudio in a terminal before playing
3. go into the wine bottle and regedit the wine entry for 3D graphics so that the VRAM of the graphics card is indicated (128MB in my case)
4. in winecfg set 3D pixel shaders to 'off', emulate a desktop (of any standard size apparently), and change the sound to OSS from ALSA

I can't really remember anything else that I might have done, but this all worked for me. Aside from a minor graphical oddity in-game (at a distance some characters are invisible, but their weapons are not - floating shields and such) everything works. I've played for hours non-stop and only my weak internet connection is to blame for dropping me once or twice.

Chris

Chris Carleton wrote:

2. kill pulseaudio in a terminal before playing
3. in winecfg set 3D pixel shaders to 'off', emulate a desktop (of
   any standard size apparently), and change the sound to OSS from ALSA

If you are using OSS then you shouldn't need to kill pulse off first, it's only ALSA and pulse that have issues (but not so far in Lucid).