Silent Hunter II Tips

The GOG.com release of this game installs cleanly into it's own bottle,
using the winXP bottle profile. The installer bundle includes a release
of Quicktime 7 -- it's installation begins once the games files have
finished copying. During the Quicktime installation, untick the option
related to getting Apple updates - the automated update process currently
fails ; just install the included copy/version of Quicktime 7 and it all
should be ok.

At the end of the installation do not launch the game -- just exit the installer instead.


This title requires two native fullscreen resolutions - 640x480 and 800x600.
If you have a widescreen or 16:9/10 display type or otherwise cannot use these
fullscreen 4:3 aspect resolutions, you will have to run things in windowed mode
(Emulate a virtual desktop) for the game to start/run.

Currently, this title doesn't work as it was intended to with crossover/wine,
and so we have to create a desktop link/icon to the main simulator executabe
to work around the issue.
 

To do all this, we'll use cxsetup to setup the bottle, using winecfg to configure
crossover/wine to run in windowed mode ('Emulate a virtual desktop'), and finally
use the Control Panel in cxsetup to create the required desktop link/icon ;


0. Start  cxsetup

1. Highlight the bottle you installed the game into

   Note: If you are using fullscreen mode, skip down to step 6.


2. Click on 'Configure' => 'Control Panel' => 'winecfg' -- the Wine Configuration GUI will appear





3. Now click on 'Graphics' tab => tick  'Emulate a virtual desktop'





4. After enabling virtual desktop mode, you will see 'Desktop size' element becomes active => change this to 640 x 480





5. Click on 'Apply' => 'Ok' => 'Ok"


6. With the bottle you installed the game into highlighted, click on Configure => 'Control Panel'


7. Click on the 'Run' button => 'Browse' and navigate to the executable 'Sim.exe', you will find
   with the following path (linux path shown);

   ~/.cxgames/<bottle name>/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/Silent Hunter II/Sim/Sim.exe


8. Highlight Sim.exe => 'Open' => 'Create Shortcut' and when finished click 'Close'


9. Exit cxsetup


Now you should find a little icon for Sim.exe on your desktop named 'Sim'

  Note: If you plan to have both Silent Hunter II and another game like this (Destroyer Command
  is one such example) that requires the same installation method and desktop shortcut being
  created as per the above to Sim.exe, you will need to rename the desktop-icon created above
  to something more meaningful..ie; changing it from 'Sim' to 'SubSim' is a logical choice.
  Then you will have two(2) desktop icons, one called 'Silent Hunter II' and the other being
  'SubSim' -- you must do this =before= you install any other title requiring a desktop link
  to Sim.exe, otherwise things are prone to be over-written and not work as expected.


Usage -- When you start the game by double-clicking on the 'Silent Hunter II' shortcut, the
game launches by starting 'sh2.exe', which immediately calls the quicktime player to play the
intro movie, and then you are presented with the game's main menu. This all works, and any
changes made are saved to disk, and this includes the mission/task details you've just selected.
When the game goes to start, it promptly dies and you're left with a 'dead' black window. Just close
this window. Now, start the game itself by double-clicking on the 'Sim' (or 'SubSim' if you renamed
 it as suggested) shortcut created above, and the game will start and run good, with the settings/
selections you just made in the main menu. Game saves and so on all seem to work fine in-game.

Note: what should be happening, is at game start sh2.exe should call quicktime player again to display
a cutscene, and then call sim.exe with the current menu settings, however a debug log inside the Sim
execdir says it failed to start, because it wasn't given any valid options - somewhere in this second
transistion to quicktime player, the wheels fall off.