FlatOut 2 Tips

As this procedure *may* also work with other Direct2Drive downloadable
game titles, a little more general detail is probably in order....

Synopsis: The Diect2Drive downloadable version of this title, incorporates
an online registration/activation process, which requires Internet Explorer 7
being present to successfully activate/unlock the game installation. At the
time of this writing, the installation of  Internet Explorer 7 is unsupported/not
working in Crossover Games ; it is however supported by Crossover Standard
and Crossover Professional.

The method below employs both Crossover Games and Crossover Standard
to result in a working solution. If you only have Crossover Games, that's fine
-- I've asked our glorious codeweavers ninjas about this, and the reply was
it's absolutely okay to download the -demo- version of  Crossover Standard
to get this all done, until Internet Explorer 7 is supported in Crossover Games.
Just login to your codeweavers account, and go to the following page to grab
the version Crossover Standard you need..then install it before continuing..;

 http://www.codeweavers.com/account/downloads/

If you already have Crossover Pro, you can use that to the same ends.

In basic terms, we use Crossover Games to create our working bottle structure,
install directx runtime and the game into that bottle, and then archive that bottle
to file (a .cxarchive). Then we use Crossover Standard to restore that archive
into the Crossover Standard environment, install Internet Explorer 7, start the
game itself to complete the online registration/activation, and check that the game
actually runs. If all is good, we then archive this bottle again using Crossover
Standard, delete this bottle in Crossover Standard (and optionally uninstall
Crossover Standard, because really, you should buy this great product too ;)
[blatant advertising plug B-]  Finally, we restore the registered/activated archive,
back into the Crossover Games environment, and everything should work as
expected - it does here.


Practical: Here's the blow-by-blow of what I did to get the Direct2Drive Flatout2
release working in linux using COG-8.0.

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[Crossover Games : part 1]

1. Using cxsetup (or cxbottlemanager) create a new bottle named 'flatout2' using the winxp bottle_profile.

2. Use winecfg to set 'emulate a virtual desktop' ON. 

3. With cxinstallwizard, install Microsoft Directx Runtime (modern) into the same 'flatout2' bottle.

4. Install Flatout 2 into the 'flatout2' bottle - during installation, do *not* install directx9c when prompted.

5. Now archive the flatout2 bottle - the resultant flatout2.cxarchive will be created (nigh on 3gb in size).

6. Delete the flatout2 bottle in Crossover Games to avoid desktop icon collision in the next part.

7. Quit the Crossover Games' cxsetup (or cxbottlemanager) program.

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[Crossover Standard/Pro part ]

8. Now, using cxsetup or cxbottlemanager from Crossover-Standard/Pro, restore the flatout2.cxarchive
    into this crossover environment.

9. Next, install 'Internet Explorer 7.0' into the restored flatout2 bottle (this will pull in other deps)

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Direct2Drive Flatout2 specific

Note: In the next step (actually starting the game itself), the first time start of Flatout2 will present
you with the hardware config screen. In the Direct2Drive release of this title, this program is *not*
supplied as a separate executable (it seems builtin to the main executable), so what selections
you make in the next step when you're presented with the hardware config screen, are going to
apply forthwith  - on this 2.1ghz AMD2 x64 / 4gb ram / nvidia 9400GT rig wih latest stable nvidia
 drivers, I was getting very good framerates @ 1024x768 and graphics to maximum.

If you need to reconfigure the video/hardware setup, delete the following file of the installation;

~/.cxgames/[bottle_name]/drive_c/Program Files/Strategy First/FlatOut 2/Savegame/device.cfg

Now when you restart the game, it will present you with the hardware setup GUI again -- it seems
the main executable checks for the existence of this file, and if it doesn't exist, it invokes the
hardware setup configurator. The above file 'device.cfg' will be recreated with your new/changed
settings, so any time you want re-run the hardware setup GUI, you must delete the device.cfg file
again to reconfigure things.

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10. Now you should now be able to start Flatout2, and the online registration procedure should work,
and you should be able to enter your activation code and even play the game ....if this all works,
you can now quit the game.

    Note: You *may* see some graphics artifacts in the game while doing this ;  these seem to disappear
              once the game archive is restored back into the Crossover Games environment in the final step.

11. Still in Crossover-Standard/Pro, archive this flatout2 bottle - name it flatout2-regged.cxarchive
      or something else easily distinguishable.

12. Delete the flatout2 bottle in Crossover-Standard/Pro to avoid desktop icon collision in the next part.
    
13. Quit the Crossover-Standard/Pro cxsetup or cxbottlemanager program when complete.
      (optionally, you may uninstall Crossover Standard at this time if you no longer need it)

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[Crossover-Games : part 2]

14. Using Crossover Games' cxsetup (or cxbottlemanager), restore the flatout2-regged.cxarchive into the COG-8.0 crossover environment

15. You should now be able to play the game - should work fine, with activation in place and all done

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