Running Source games (HL2, CSS, DODS)

[ChickensDontFly]

What are other users results running HL2, CSS, and DODS? I've seen a lot of posts where people say they have these games running perfectly...I wish that were the case for me. Steam will install and work perfectly but, at least in my case, the games Steam supports do not.

I've tried for ages to get these games running but I can't seem to do it. I've tried several different ways in the past and here are my pathetic results:

Method: WineCVS
I followed the guide here: http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/wiwimod/index.php?page=HOWTO+Steam&back=HOWTO+INDEX+Wine+Games

HL2 - loaded the menu, could change settings, and started a new game. However, when I start a new game, I hear the audio, but the video just flickers.

CSS - doesn't even make it to the menu.


Method: Cedega 14-Day Demo
I installed this yesterday and have been trying to get Source games working ever since. I'm not having much luck.

HL2 - loaded the menu, could change settings, starts the game and works. The downside being 8-10 fps, no matter the settings.

CSS - makes it to the background image and the loading section for a few seconds, then the screen then goes black and I have to kill it.


To those who have it running, any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance for listing your results.

-Chicken

[alienjon]

Ya know, I've been thinking about installing HL2 on Gentoo just to see how it goes (now that I have an nVidia card again). If/when I get the chance, I'll see if I can help you out.

[baigsabeeh]

Can you post your Delta configuration files? It should be in the .cedega directory.

All of mine work perfectly. I use Cedega.
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[ChickensDontFly]

Thanks for the fast replies. I would love it if I got these games working so then I can completely get rid of Windows.

The demo filetree is a little different, but I'm assuming you wanted my configuration file. Sorry for it's length...I removed all the comments to make it as short as possible.

Here's ~/transgaming_cedega_timedemo/.cedega_timedemo/configuration_profiles:

[baigsabeeh]

That's not what I was looking for. I assume you already got Steam installed and Hl2 and so on. Have you made separate shortcuts for them in Cedega interface? What settings are you using for the shortcuts and or Steam?
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[ChickensDontFly]

I only have one profile for steam. I did get steam, HL2, and CSS installed succesful, but HL2 gets 10 fps and CSS crashes before the menu.

The settings I use for the profile are all in my previous post which I can retype in a more readable format if that's what you want.

The launch options I'm using for both games are -dxlevel 70 -width 1024 -height 768 -novid.

If you need anything else let me know. Be specific as I'm brand new to Cedega.

Thanks for helping me.

[baigsabeeh]

[ChickensDontFly]

It's still doing the same things...very frustrating.

What is your defaultdepth set to in your xorg.conf and what is it in your Cedega config?

I wouldn't mind paying the 15 bucks if I knew that HL2/CSS would work on my comp. I've tried Cedega twice, once a year ago and now this attempt. Both turned out to be unpleasant. I don't like the concept of paying to use their forums...and I especially don't like how you pay to use the forums and they're not even helping the people that post. It's bad marketing and a bad business model, but that's my two cents.

I'm gonna keep messing with different settings.
Let me know if you have any other suggestions and thanks for your help so far.

[ChickensDontFly]

Does anyone else have any ideas?

[alienjon]

Ok, I just finished installing and testing Steam and HL2 (I'll try to give CS a shot later in the week) Steam installed pretty well and half life 2 installed just fine (I downloaded it via steam instead of using my cd's (as I hear there have been problems with the cd installs)) Anyway, I installed steam via wine (the latest unstable version) and have done no hardware tweaking (as of yet) to my wine. The first time I started the game up it crashed right after it started loading the main menu. The second time, however, it started up fine (maybe I was running a sound process or something that it didn't like the first time). I goofed with the resolution settings and found that it is fine when run at 1024x768 but the screen gets messed up if I raise the resolution. The only other thing I did was increase reflections (which don't seem to be working as they should in the game). I then started up a new game and played for about 5 minutes or so without any problems.

If you're interested I could post some info (just let me know what you'd like to see)

By the way, I'm running gentoo w/ nvidia 7600gs and an AMD 64 x2 4400+

[BlackEdder]

[alienjon]

Well, wine wasn't a fresh install PER SE, since I had it installed for a little while now, but I haven't really installed anything else on it yet either, so it should be pretty clean/"out of the box". I downloaded the steam client from their website. Check this link to see the specific details on how I did it. (It's in the comment section)

As I had said in my last post, the way I had installed it was by downloading half-life 2 through steam and running it from there.

Good luck!

[ChickensDontFly]

I just installed the latest wine (0.9.19) and will give that a try.

Hopefully it wont be as painful as Cedega...

[alienjon]

Try syncing portage, I've been up to 0.9.20 for a couple of weeks now. I don't know if it'll make a difference, but if it doesn't work it'll be worth a shot.

[BlackEdder]

I installed steam (needed to set windows version to win xp, and kill it a couple off times) and it works beautifully. Now installing css, will take some time

[ChickensDontFly]

Thanks for the quick response.

You caught it before I was far along in the install. Emerging wine 0.9.20 now.

[ChickensDontFly]

I may have looked over the comments too quickly, but i wasn't sure which one was your post. So I apologize if this is redundant.

What do you have set in winecfg? What OS, dll overrides, pixel shader settings?

CSS works perfectly up until Sending Client Info or right as it's starting the local game.

HL2 loads the game, but I get 0-2 fps.

[alienjon]

I actually checked my wine configuration after I had posted last and at that point everything was actually at a default setting. I had noticed, though, a console message suggesting to switch audio from 'hardware' to 'emulation'. That MAY help a little bit, but I wouldn't put a big bet on it. Rather, though, it almost sounds as if you are having a video card issue maybe? What card do you have and do you have opengl setup?

Please post the output of the following:

[ChickensDontFly]

My video card:

[alienjon]

[ChickensDontFly]

Yeah, I beat HL2 in Windows and frequently play CS. I probably average around 45-50 frames in CSS. It's really the only reason I still have a Windows partition.

I think it's something I have misconfigured. In the intro of HL2, I never see G-Man. I heard him talking and waited it out at 10 fps, then goes to the train sequence where I get 8-20 fps. That's one of the reasons why I have something misconfigured. The other reason being in the demo of Cedega I could see G-Man.

I am about to try experimenting with wine's dll override section to see if I can get some better results.

[alienjon]

I wouldn't freak out about that intro too much. I had read that (at least for wine) many people cannot see him for one reason or another (I actually didn't, now that I think about it) If you do find a way, though, please feel free to share

Also, even though I am working (for the most part) out of a clean wine configuration, if you would like to see some configuration info, please feel free to ask

[ChickensDontFly]

What I didn't like was that I could see him in the Cedega demo and I haven't yet with Wine. At least I know it's possible I guess.

Alright. Here's the latest update. I am playing and enjoying both games even though they are still not quite fully functional. Hopefully, after a little more tweaking, they will both run to the best of wine's ability.

First, Let me apologize for the long post.

Now, let's do a little refresh from where I started and then get into how I got to where I am at.

Method: Wine 0.9.20
Wine Settings: Default
Results:

HL2 - I could fully load the menu and play HL2 (with working audio). The problem being I got a MAX of 10fps. In the opening sequence with G-Man, I couldn't get higher than 2 fps...and I couldn't even see G-Man! It also would crash if you changed any setting and at random other times.
Max FPS: 10
Playable: Just enough to make one very very frustrated. In other words...no.

CSS- This was almost fully functional right after install. The servers list worked, the friends list worked, and it appeared that connecting to/creating a game would work. When connecting to a game, it always got stuck on sending client info. When creating a game, it always got stuck on initializing game. The strange thing was the Video Stress Test worked and returned an avg of 40fps (with missing textures).
Playable: No


Method: Wine 0.9.20
Wine Settings: Library tab- add d3d9 to existing overrides with override being Native then Builtin. Audio tab - ALSA Driver checked, Hardware Acceleration Full, Driver Emulation checked
Results:

HL2 - Audio quality (in CSS) defaulted on low and I changed it to high. You can change everything but your video settings withought HL2 crashing. Starting and loading a game was fully functional. I started a new game and was getting 40-50fps! Not sensational by any means, but going from 2-10fps to 40-50fps made me very happy. I still couldn't see G-Man but hopefully I'll figure that out later. I played HL2 for about an hour and half throughout the day and noticed three things. One..In some places there were missing textures (A large junk of the floor was all white in the lab right before the teleportation and other random spots were white). In total, from the hour and a half I played, there weren't too many. Two..There was a light rainbow style gradient on some textures. Quite annoying but you get used it. Hopefully there's a fix. Three...The flashlight doesn't work. Not a big issue, but when you're crawlin around in a ventilation shaft...it can get pretty dark.
Playable: Yes, it was enjoyable despite the issues.

CSS - No change. I still couldnt connect to/create a server. The video stress test worked and I averaged 73fps. Even though it's a big improvement, it doesn't mean much when you can't play the game.
Playable: No


Method: Wine 0.9.20
Settings: Library tab- add d3d9 to existing overrides with override being Native then Builtin. Audio tab - ALSA Driver NOT checked, Hardware Acceleration Full, Driver Emulation checked
Results:

HL2 - Same as above except it does not have sound.
Playable: Yes

CSS - I could finally connect to/create a server, but unfortunately not with sound. My fps ranged from 30-70. The rainbow gradient thing is much more apparent. Hopefully there is a fix for that. Some boxes were too bright and a few textures were missing. That or they were really bright. The only other thing was that CS had a difficult time rendering things over the models. When I hit tab to showscores, the arms would sometimes be through the scores or it would cause the arms to have black lines through them. It's not a big deal because it goes away when you aren't looking at the scores, but it's a little more distracting/annoying when you are spectating(the hands go over the person's name). *Note: You can get CSS to run with sound if you set the Direct Sound driver to emulation. When you do that though, you'll go back down to 10fps and the audio is ghastly.
Playable: Yes...finally. Hopefully I'll have sound soon.

So that's where I stand right now. If anyone knows how to fix any of the above mentioned issues, please let me know.

I'm wondering if my sound card is setup correctly. It's really weird that the sound would work in HL2, but not in CSS. I'll check the wiki again and make sure I didn't make any mistakes. Any ideas/suggestions/theories are welcome.

[Lloeki]

did you try hl2dm?

on a p-m 1.6ghz, 1.5GHz ram, x600 mobility, my tests on a fresh wine 0.9.20 install were:

sound goes via oss, ps enabled, vs hardware

I start the games via steam

hl2:
starts fine, shows menu with nice animated background, at 720x480 (resolution I play it) fps seems maxxed (~60)
when I want to start a new game, there's the 'half life 2' fade-in-out and sound, but the rest is just a black screen, then the screen fades to gray when arriving in the train. then X is locked up or does not receive key events (like ctl+alt+backspace is ineffective), cpu goes 100% (fan spins up high). acpi events are responsive: i can switch off sound (done via acpi on my laptop) or power down safely.

css:
crash, wine goes in debug mode
steam is unaffected by the crash

hl2dm:
the one I tried most
starts fine, create server fine, play fine. framerate is excellent.
objects were badly lit (mostly overbright). it was using dx7 mode. forcing it to dx8 or dx81 makes rendering perfect afaik
changing graphics options make the game render badly, but works, thoug you have to exit the game and restart to make ip playable again.

unfortunately hl2dm locks up X after some playtime. I tried desktop mode, hoping to kill it, but it failed too, X is clearly locked up.

this might be related to ati drivers. they exhibit vertex corruption when playing (native linux) doom3 for an extended time, and if I try to disabel VBO in doom3, it locks up X just the same minutes after rendering began.

I tried hl2 using latest cedega, under which guild wars is just marvellously working, but it locked X the same way. the gman was showing though, albeit with much texture artifacting.
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[ChickensDontFly]

I just got sound working in CSS. Sometimes it makes a short annoying sound at the start of each round, but it's pretty random. On the library tab under dll overrides, disable dsound.

Yeah, I've been running an emulated desktop for the majority of my debugging. Crash handling is soo much easier that way.

The launch options I've been using for each source game are: -heapsize 512000 -dxlevel 90 -novid -console -width 1280 -height 1024

To start steam I use the command