Open General on Linux with Wine

[Llewen]

***UPDATED Oct. 22, 2024***

Open General working with all the bells and whistles including weather effects, audio and video playback, on a multi-monitor setup.

Linux Distro: Debian 12 bookworm
Desktop: KDE Plasma wayland
Application Launcher: Lutris
Wine Version: 8.27
Architecture: 32 bit
Hardware Wrinkles: multiple monitors

The first problem was that I have a multiple monitor setup and the app wasn't opening on the correct monitor. My two monitors have different resolutions, both monitors are identical but the second one sits a bit further away from me so I have it on a lower resolution to make it easier to work with and read--old eyes. The app was opening as if it was in full screen mode on the primary monitor, but it was opening on the secondary monitor, which meant it was opening in a resolution that rendered much of the game window off the screen. When I tried to move the game window it would deform.

The simple solution to this is alt-f3. That is the default kwin shortcut for the "Window Operations Menu". When you bring that up you can set the window settings for Open General, or any app, to anything you want. I found that the "Screen" option, "0", was what I was looking for. That opened the game on my main screen without messing around with any of the other game windows. You can find those settings under "More Actions", "Configure Special Application Settings".

Getting video playback working:

This was a significant problem in previous versions of wine/Debian/wayland, and involved installing third party codecs, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Recent updates to drivers and wine seem to have resolved these issues and it appears to be no longer necessary to install codecs packages—which stopped working regardless when Debian 12 was released. However there are still hoops to jump through, so bear with me.

First off, Open General is a 32 bit application, so you should already have multiarch enabled in your distro, if you don't, see the following Debian FAQ.

https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO

You will probably want to install a 3rd party kernel. Those are necessary for certain options, such as fsync, to work in Lutris. At a minimum you will need to install the kernel from backports. I use the xanmod kernel.

https://xanmod.org/

You will need in install the following Debian packages or their equivalent, depending on your distro. You can run the following command on Debian:

sudo apt install ffmpeg:i386 gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad:i386 gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly:i386

You will want to install lutris and winetricks if you haven't already:

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sudo apt install lutris winetricks

Then you will want to install several packages from backports. You will find the instructions to set up backports here:

https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

Once you have done that and run "sudo apt update", you can use the following command:

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apt install -t bookworm-backports firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-misc-nonfree linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64 linux-libc-dev

You will also need to install the drivers for your specific hardware from backports. The following is a possible list of packages. Note that with Linux the list of drivers you need to install can be counter-intuitive and you may need to install drivers for hardware that you may feel doesn't match the list of the hardware in your system:

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firmware-amd-graphics firmware-nvidia-graphics firmware-intel-graphics firmware-intel-misc firmware-iwlwifi firmware-mediatek firmware-realtek

You will want to use the latest version of wine available through Lutris. You will need to set your wine prefix to run in Windows 7 mode or later.

You may also need to install a number of dlls/apps using winetricks. The following is a list of winetrick "verbs" that I have installed in the prefix I use to run Open General:

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d3dx9 devenum dxwnd galliumnine msxml3 msxml4 msxml6 vcrun2005 vcrun2010 vcrun2012 vcrun2013

Note that I am currently unsure as to which of those verbs specifically are necessary for Open General to run successfully with full video support.

ADDENDUM: I have found that there are a couple of packages that improve the function of just about any application running under wine, you can install them on Debian using the following command:

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sudo apt install wine32-preloader wine64-preloader

[Llewen]

It appears that the audio in the intro video to Open General is not working. Not sure why that doesn't work, it is working in the campaign videos. Suffice to say that you may need to mess around with Shark007's settings to get that working, and if you do, please post here with the solution so I can add it to the op.

[Llewen]

Updated the OP.

[lvjtn]

just a quck question. do we really need to add all those 32bit i386 packages? i've checked my laptop, and adding wine would require more than 1gb disk space, which sounds a bit ridiculous. as it works on my desktop pc, i don't mind, but in the future, it can be intersting to use only wine64 packages for opengen

[Llewen]

Open General is 32 bit is it not? If it is, then yes, you need those 32 bit packages. If it isn't, then you don't. I just assumed it was because most games of this vintage are. But seeing as Luis is compiling it, it's entirely possible it isn't...

And yes, 1GB seems like a lot until you realize you are essentially adding an entire OS.

[lvjtn]

Open General is 32 bit is it not?

yes, it is, i just wondered whether the x64 libs in linux had backward compatibility, as ubuntu planed to drop the entire i386 support, but it seems it's necessary for running wine, and at least the ubuntu 20.04 lts supports the i386 packages

[Llewen]

Open General is 32 bit is it not?

yes, it is, i just wondered whether the x64 libs in linux had backward compatibility, as ubuntu planed to drop the entire i386 support, but it seems it's necessary for running wine, and at least the ubuntu 20.04 lts supports the i386 packages

That's one reason why I have no plans to ever switch to Ubuntu. I use Debian which gives me access to all of the goodies Ubuntu offers, but still provides support for important things like 32 bit libraries.

[Llewen]

Once again taking a stab at getting the video replay working properly on wine. Will report back.

[Llewen]

Video playback is working properly, I have updated the OP.

[Llewen]

UPDATE:

I have yet to get video playback working properly under Debian bookworm, which is now full wayland. I have also added a note to the OP, I have discovered two packages that improve the running of just about any application under wine. So much so that I'm surprised it took me so long to find good information on them. You can install them on Debian using the following command:

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sudo apt install wine32-preloader wine64-preloader

[Llewen]

I have finally managed to get Open General working with full video support on Debian 12. I have updated the instructions in the OP.