Everquest II

Been working on this lately and noticed this thread.

Using the version of wine shipped with Ubuntu 14.04 and installing corefonts and d3dx9 from winetricks I can get both the game running using either client. The performance compared to my system from my win7 partition is poor however.

I have been attempting to get the game installed using POL thinking I could more easily change some of the settings to improve graphical performance since I dont know much about wine. I read multiple guides on this site to gleen some info about common practices for setting up games in POL(thank you very much for those btw they are awesome).

Installing from a 32 bit virtual machine, regardless of other settings, causes the installer to ignore the download portion of the game. I *think* the thinclient gets installed but it blows right past the portion where the actual game is downloaded and installed.

Using the 64 bit version the game seems to install just fine. Unfortunatly the shortcut that is created is unresponsive. Its entirely possible that Im doing something wrong of course but I have installed a couple of other apps with no real issues.

I also tried using the wine version listed in the most recent WineHQ app test in which Everquest2 got a gold rating. I still get the issue with the link not responding though and havent gotten any further.

The game from full download is 15gig. The streaming client requests just over 12 when you jinstall but it will require 2+ more everytime it runs (even if your client is up to date).

Going to try installing and manually moving the reg keys in wine to replicate some of the graphical tweaks listed in the guides today to see if it improves.

Sincerely,
Joshua Norton
 
Welcome to the forum... and congrats on your progress!
PlayOnLinux is a great tool for testing wine versions and tweaking settings on the fly.
I'm surprised that the 32-bit virtual drive doesn't actually download the game. Not a huge deal because you an always launch the thinclient later on, but most clients I have installed will run just fine.
Either way, 64-bit is fine too.
You can always create a shortcut to the 32-bit executable by going to Configure
Select the virtual drive
On the General Tab, click "create new shortcut in this virtual drive"
It will scan the whole virtual drive for .exe's
Maybe there is a specific 32-bit one for Everquest?

What video card/chip are you using?
AMD is know to have bad performance, but Nvidia is AWESOME!
 
booman said:
Welcome to the forum... and congrats on your progress!
PlayOnLinux is a great tool for testing wine versions and tweaking settings on the fly.
I'm surprised that the 32-bit virtual drive doesn't actually download the game. Not a huge deal because you an always launch the thinclient later on, but most clients I have installed will run just fine.
Either way, 64-bit is fine too.
You can always create a shortcut to the 32-bit executable by going to Configure
Select the virtual drive
On the General Tab, click "create new shortcut in this virtual drive"
It will scan the whole virtual drive for .exe's
Maybe there is a specific 32-bit one for Everquest?

What video card/chip are you using?
AMD is know to have bad performance, but Nvidia is AWESOME!
Click to expand...


Good afternoon,

Im using a Raedon 5770 and wine version 1.6.2.

Im using the flgrx drivers that are installed by default from Ubuntu - not sure if some of the open source drivers might be better or not.

The install from POL is odd, Im sure it could be done and probably the issue is just my lack of knowledge of the app specifics. I believe the issue may be the exe Im linking when I install the 64 bit version as when wine installs for me it appears to link "launchpad.exe" instead of "Everquest2.exe" - I will try again today sometime and see if that fixes my issue.

Currently game is running but with same settings I use from my win7 partition Im getting roughly 60% of the framerate. Its playable - just hopefully can be improved upon with some tweaks.

I tried modifying some of the reg keys in wine for Direct3D such as forcing opengl and setting fob as the background renderer. It appears from the wiki though that these options are already enabled by default - I didnt see anything significant when I tried it.

Sincerely,
Joshua Norton
 
Thanks, I'm glad you are patient enough to troubleshoot it...
If my internet was faster, I would probably take some time and download the whole game.... 15 GB is a LOT!

I didn't realize it was actually running! Good job!
FGLRX drivers are the best you can do with AMD cards... unfortunately. Open Source are not up to "par" with most games.
So that is good.
Wine 1.6.2 is probably fine unless you want to try testing it with newer versions. You might get better performance or you won't.
Doesn't hurt to try.

Do you know if there are separate exe's for 32-bit, 64-bit and streaming?
I wonder if you could accidentally be launching the "streaming" client even though you have the whole game?
 
Do you know if there are separate exe's for 32-bit, 64-bit and streaming?
I wonder if you could accidentally be launching the "streaming" client even though you have the whole game?
Click to expand...

Morning,

No seperate exe's for 32 bit vs. 64 bit. My win7 partition is 32 bit and uses the same linked exe and it works. I installed last night again and resolved the issue with not being able to start, I was indeed linking the wrong file.

I installed MScorefonts and d3dx9, as I had from winetricks for the non POL install, which worked. Thsi time though I get an error saying I need Arial in order for the game to run. Not sure if maybe the version if corefonts that POL is installing are not the same as the one that would be installed from winetricks or what. Tried rebooting and also reinstalling the package from the POL menu but no luck. Going to see if I can pull the files from .wine over to the POL virtual drive foler manually maybe if I can find them.

Sincerely,
Joshau Norton
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Unfortunatly copying the font files over from .wine to POL install directory seems to have broken the virtual drive somehow - it will no longer boot.

Sincerely,
Joshua Norton
 
If the virtual drive is broken, you will probably have to re-create it again. I'm not sure if you can backup your Everquest II files so you don't have to download the entire game again.... but you might want to find out if that is possible.

There are several font packages available through winetricks, but PlayOnLinux offers these:
  • MS Registered Fonts
  • Core Fonts
  • Tahoma
When you install PlayOnLinux and launch it the first time, it will ask you to download fonts. I wonder if you missed this step?
Also, I don't think its as easy as copy/paste fonts to the drive_c/Windows/fonts folder. I really don't know how Wine handles fonts and where it references them.
 
I read a post that suggest copying arial fonts from /usr/share/fonts/TTF to your drive_c/windows/fonts folder.
 
booman said:
I read a post that suggest copying arial fonts from /usr/share/fonts/TTF to your drive_c/windows/fonts folder.
Click to expand...

Hrm - I tried copying from .wine c drive font folder to the POL drive font folder with no luck but I will give this a shot as well.

Sincerely,
Joshua Norton
 
Well something up now, Got the following message a couple times and the thinclient will no longer launch. I think this stemmed from the earlier copy of the wine fonts folder and I will reinstall though and try the copy again. Also, of the fonts listed for POL in your earlier post the only one I installed was mscorefonts, I will include the other two this time.

Sincerely,
Joshua Norton

Code: 
[06/04/14 17:28:45] - Running wine- LaunchPad.exe (Working directory : /home/josh/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/eq2/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/EverQuest II)
fixme:ntdll:NtQuerySystemInformation info_class SYSTEM_PERFORMANCE_INFORMATION
fixme:time:GetSystemTimes (0x33f4a4,0x33f494,0x33f49c): Stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x333778,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:mountmgr:harddisk_ioctl Unsupported ioctl 74080 (device=7 access=1 func=20 method=0)
fixme:mountmgr:harddisk_ioctl Unsupported ioctl 2d1400 (device=2d access=0 func=500 method=0)
fixme:mountmgr:harddisk_ioctl Unsupported ioctl 74080 (device=7 access=1 func=20 method=0)
fixme:time:GetSystemTimes (0x33a2b0,0x33a2a0,0x33a2a8): Stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x339808,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:dbghelp:elf_search_auxv can't find symbol in module

**************************************
*      Detected a fatal error      *
**************************************
Crash data saved:
C:\users\josh\Temp\SCE\wws_crashreport\LaunchPad.exe-00000006483c8cea.session
 
I just tried Ever Quest II again but it still has the Arial not loaded problem. I tried Civilization 5 last not but it seems to be broken. Maybe Steam or Fireaxis made another update that broke wine compatibility. I am going to try my other Steam games later but thought I'd try to fix EQII today. Maybe since its Sony is going 64 bit only then maybe they decided to switch EQII to 64bit only! That's just a guess so It doesn’t mean everything is going 64 bit. Remember in my other post I said that Sonny said that EQ Landmark and EQ Next and all future Sony games will be 64 bit only.
 
steve723 said:
I just tried Ever Quest II again but it still has the Arial not loaded problem. I tried Civilization 5 last not but it seems to be broken. Maybe Steam or Fireaxis made another update that broke wine compatibility. I am going to try my other Steam games later but thought I'd try to fix EQII today. Maybe since its Sony is going 64 bit only then maybe they decided to switch EQII to 64bit only! That's just a guess so It doesn’t mean everything is going 64 bit. Remember in my other post I said that Sonny said that EQ Landmark and EQ Next and all future Sony games will be 64 bit only.
Click to expand...


Negative on that, my windows partition is 32 bit and the game runs great, I believe the client probably detects the architecture and installs based off that since it's downloading after the thin client instslls.

The game is playable without pol using wine for me, the issue seems to be pol specific.
 
Sounds like you aren't the only one having this "arial" problem in Wine.

Steam has been known to update their client and it will break in Wine. So that is a possibility. Even Fireaxis patching up a game could break it, but that rarely happens to me. I miss the old days where you had to patch it yourself if you wanted to.

Josh - Are you also using the Steam to play Everquest II?
Instead of installing the entire game again, remember you can backup your game to your desktop and then restore it quickly without having to download all 15 Gigs again.

Steve - I remember reading something about that. Its only a problem for 32-bit gamers, but most people should be on 64-bit these days.
 
Josh said:
Negative on that, my windows partition is 32 bit and the game runs great, I believe the client probably detects the architecture and installs based off that since it's downloading after the thin client instslls.

The game is playable without pol using wine for me, the issue seems to be pol specific.
Click to expand...
Its very possible that POL is having a hard time showing you how to use virtual drives and wine versions.
I only use 32-bit virtual drive and 32-bit wine versions. I never have any problems.
But I have yet to use a 64-bit executable in PlayOnLinux. That day will come :cool:
 
booman said:
Welcome to the forum... and congrats on your progress!
PlayOnLinux is a great tool for testing wine versions and tweaking settings on the fly.
I'm surprised that the 32-bit virtual drive doesn't actually download the game. Not a huge deal because you an always launch the thinclient later on, but most clients I have installed will run just fine.
Either way, 64-bit is fine too.
You can always create a shortcut to the 32-bit executable by going to Configure
Select the virtual drive
On the General Tab, click "create new shortcut in this virtual drive"
It will scan the whole virtual drive for .exe's
Maybe there is a specific 32-bit one for Everquest?

What video card/chip are you using?
AMD is know to have bad performance, but Nvidia is AWESOME!
Click to expand...


I am getting that same Can not init arial

I have used wine versions from 1.7.1-Guildwars2 to 1.7.55-staging

I checked the fonts directory and the arial .ttf is there.

Any suggestions?
 
Nope, I haven't heard from Josh or Steve in a long time about Everquest

Did you install the "Microsoft Registered Fonts" package in PlayOnLinux?
There is also a "Core Fonts" package as well

If those don't work, then I'm pretty clueless. have you found any other website like WineHQ that mentions this font problem?
 
booman said:
Nope, I haven't heard from Josh or Steve in a long time about Everquest

Did you install the "Microsoft Registered Fonts" package in PlayOnLinux?
There is also a "Core Fonts" package as well

If those don't work, then I'm pretty clueless. have you found any other website like WineHQ that mentions this font problem?
Click to expand...

Yes I installed the corefonts and I tried to install the microsoft and it came up and just quickly looked like it was going to but not sure it did anything.

I physically checked the font location and the arial.ttf and several others are there.

I have come across a couple of sites that talk about it - apparently even in windows they had this problem.

No real solution.

I am also trying to install Planetside 2 but that doesnt even get started.

On EQ2 I get the login screen - I login in and it does the file check.

Then it starts to load but immediately goes to that error.

PoL has a script for both those games but they dont work either :(
 
have you tried manual installation?
Go ahead and try a newer version of Wine as well: 1.7.55-staging
This problem might already be fixed... for both games
 
booman said:
have you tried manual installation?
Go ahead and try a newer version of Wine as well: 1.7.55-staging
This problem might already be fixed... for both games
Click to expand...

I have tried that version of wine. It really doesnt seem to be a wine problem.
It just wont initialize the arial font. Windows was even having this problem.
The only solution I found is where they manually downloaded the arial font and reinstalled it.
I checked the fonts directory and its there. Not sure how to with PoL and wine to try that process in Linux.
Thanks for coming up with more suggestions.
 
Which font directory?
Code: 
~/.fonts
or
Code: 
~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/everquest/drive_c/Windows/fonts

The Launcher uses Webkit
I'm researching online and just realized Webkit is what Firefox is made from.
Try installing Firefox in the virtual drive. I don't think you will have to run it, but as long as its installed, it might help.
Some older games require Internet Explorer 8 to run and I've had to install it as well. Hence why its available as a package with PlayOnLinux.

Also, someone wrote to install this Font:
Liberation Sans

You may have to download it and copy/paste it to those font directories
Apparently it helps Planetside 2 crashes

You can also manually download and copy/paste:
Arial
Tahoma

You may also have to try some older versions of Wine as well.
There is a Wine 1.5.27-PlanetSide2
But if the launcher has updates, it may break that version of Wine that was patched for Planetside 2.

Launchers and Clients have proven to cause lots of problems for Wine
There is eventually a way around it but we have to wait for programmers to patch Wine with the fix.
 
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