MOTORM4X Forum

I first posted this in the general COG forums:

CrossOver Games 8.0.0 Linux
Ubuntu Studio 8.04, Radeon 2600 XT

I only tried the demo (unfortunately the English version was
released only in Australia due to publisher issues). It installs
very well (I think it's Nullsoft Installer). But crashes when I
start it ("the program has encountered a serious problem and needs
to close").

What can I do to get more info about the crash? Is there some log
file or some output? I'd like to help pinpoint the error but I don't
know how.

Demo from here: http://www.easyco-games.com/games.html it's 500+ MB.

And an answer there by Don:

Hi,

Firstly, you should post in the game/title's forum for the sake of
order, and no
this isn't the official support system, but you're free to ask
questions and so etc etc..

As for debugging the thing....how handy are you with the linux
shell? At a guess, I'm
going to say it'll be your radeon (linux) drivers causing some of
your grief...have you
tried installing directx into the same bottle, running it in
windowed mode etc etc....

Don,

• I'm a bit above-n00b at shell: I can navigate to start apps from shell, I sometimes need to: chown, pppoe, dhcpcd, sometimes read some man pages, that's about it
• I tried running it in window, makes no difference
• how do I install DirectX? Download the kit from some downloads site? (e.g. Softpedia)

Stefan G wrote:

Don,

• I'm a bit above-n00b at shell: I can navigate to start apps from
  shell, I sometimes need to: chown, pppoe, dhcpcd, sometimes read
  some man pages, that's about it
• I tried running it in window, makes no difference
• how do I install DirectX? Download the kit from some downloads
  site? (e.g. Softpedia)

No, it's a builtin install target in COG ... click on 'show all service packs and dependencies'
in the cxinstallwizard GUI -- you should then be able to scrolldown to the directx targets (use
'modern' in this case). If installing directx doesn't help, let me know here and we can go
forward....

I'm totally impressed by COG. With this built-in install of DX I didn't have to download it myself. It's amazingly user friendly. And I know I just sounded like in a stupid commercial with shiny computer-bleached teeth and all :P

Anyway that was the cause for the game crashing at start so thanks a lot Don! Maybe COG, being the games edition, could have some sort of hint or prod for the user to install this DX after installing COG, so that they don't have to search the forums to find it out.

Or did I get it wrong? Is this actually some sort of last resort solution? Was Wine actually supposed to be able to run the game (ideally)? And what I did was actually bring the Windows native files over because they have better support?

Edit: wow I just had to edit this to say, my last paragraph with 4 questions in a row sounds like a crap movie line or something, so sorry about the poor choice of many-question I had there :P

Edit #2: Actually the game starts but it has corrupted graphics so I'll open another thread.

Stefan G wrote:

I'm totally impressed by COG. With this built-in install of DX I
didn't have to download it myself. It's amazingly user friendly. And
I know I just sounded like in a stupid commercial with shiny
computer-bleached teeth and all :P

Anyway that was the cause for the game crashing at start so thanks a
lot Don! Maybe COG, being the games edition, could have some sort
of hint or prod for the user to install this DX after installing
COG, so that they don't have to search the forums to find it out.

Or did I get it wrong? Is this actually some sort of last resort
solution? Was Wine actually supposed to be able to run the game
(ideally)? And what I did was actually bring the Windows native
files over because they have better support?

Edit: wow I just had to edit this to say, my last paragraph with 4
questions in a row sounds like a crap movie line or something, so
sorry about the poor choice of many-question I had there :P

...hehe....

Crossover/wine includes it's own native versions of directx libraries, however not all of them are
as complete/finished as everyone would like them to be....hence, in some instances, we call on the
'real' directx dll's to get the job done. Whether or not one actually -needs- directx runtime to be
included in the bottle, is extremely hard to determine without testing. You could say, we are doing
that now...but at any rate, lets say that at sometime in the future, someone writes a tip&trick about
this title --- it will be there that a 'heads up' is given indicating you need install directx.

Not all titles need directx -- a lot of titles run fine using the builtin wine versions of same, and
actually installing directx for some titles will actually -break- them, not make them any better. A
good example is one title I have, which needs d3d9.dll to be the wine builtin version, but it also needs
the native d3d9_27.dll as well (no the whole of directx, just that one library). This will no doubt be
because software routines contained in d3d9_27.dll have not yet/cannot be included in the wine libraries.

In 'ideal' situations, yes, wine should be able to run things as-is 'out of the box', but this is not
an ideal world, newer version of directx keep being released, which newer games get developed/based on,
and so you see that a lot of the time wine is playing a game of catch-up with such changes.

Umm...installing directx is not so much a 'last resort' as it is the 'next best guess' of what to try.
Hope this answers some of you queries here...

Yes this answers exactly what I meant to ask, so thanks for taking the time to explain. I see what you mean with the catching up.