Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King Guide

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is a hack-n-slash game where you re-live the movie and can play as each of the main characters. The game plays in third person as you pick off minions and bosses from the movies. Execute combos, special moves and level up to purchase new abilities.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Retail version of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.5
Wine: 1.6.2

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.6.2
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.6.2 is installed and you can close this window

Copy CD ROM Data

Create a folder on your desktop
Enter Install Disk
Copy all of the files to your folder

Click "Skip" on any Replace file warnings

Enter the next CD ROM and do the same thing
The play Disk is the last one

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: returntotheking
Click Next

Check all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.6.2

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Application Tab
Windows version: windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1024x768

Installing Packages (Libraries, Components, DLL's)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Note: All libraries will automatically download and install

Click Next

At this point PlayOnLinux refuses to install the Game
Click Cancel

PlayOnLinux Configure

Click Configure
Select virtual drive: returntotheking

General Tab
Wine Version: 1.6.2
Note: Click the + to download another version of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select another version of Wine.

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Installing Lord Of the Rings Return To The King

Miscellanous Tab
Click "Run a exe file in this virtual drive"

Navigate to the folder on your desktop
Select AutoRun.exe or Setup.exe
Click Open

Click Install

Click Yes

Enter the key off the Game insert

Click Next

Click "Register Later"

Installing...

Insert the Play Disc
Click OK

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Back to General Tab
Click "Make a new shortcut from this virtual drive"

Select ROTK.exe
Click Next

Name your shortcut: LOTR Return of the King
Click Next

Click Next

Close Configure

Launch Lord Of The Rings Return To The King

Select LOTR Return of the King
Click Run
Note: Click Debug to see errors and bugs

Optimization

When the game begins you will see some movie clips, then it automatically begins playing.
You can press ESC to see options or wait until you get to the Home screen

Click Options

Click Video
Set Resolution
Note: LOTR only accepts 3:4 aspect ratios, so you will need to change your Linux desktop to a resolution on this list

Adjust:

• 32 bit color
• Character Detail
• Shadows
• SFX
• Alternate Cameras

Rule of thumb:
Higher settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Lower settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
Once I set my Linux Desktop to 1400x1050 the game would appear fullscreen. There is no widescreen support. The Shadows setting would default to Low unless I set it in the ROTK.ini
You can find it in your home folder.
Otherwise, the game ran perfectly and is suitable for laptops and older computers. The controls are kinda strange due to the way the in-game camera floats around. I also tested with a joystick and was able to play cooperative perfectly.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

Very good old title, good guide works for most users want used, normally guides for older titles is uncommon

 

Exactly! I have a bunch of old games, but I know most gamers want to play new games. So I try to mix it up and do a bit of both.
I was surprised how cool this game was. There are no patches or mods that I can find, so you will be stuck with 4:3 ratios with the resolution.
But the controller support in Linux is great and I was able to play cooperative.

 

hi, im aware this may be old, but i really need an answer. i did everything stated in this article, however, whenever i get to the "please insert play disc" part, i cannot get wine to read the disk. mint itself reads the disc, but wine will not. when i go into the wine config, under drives, my "D:" is the disc drive. it shows the disc within that drive, but no dice.

in the terminal, i have tried:

1) wine eject
2) wine eject -a
3) wine "path/to/your/drive/and/setup.exe" (of course not word for word that)
4) exiting wine, reseating the CD, and trying again

nothing has worked so far. so if you could get back to me asap, i would be very appreciative. thank you in advance!

also, does this absolutely have to be done with wine? i'm not all too familiar with distros, but in the event that mint has bugs reading things pertaining to wine correctly, could i try to use something like fedora, or ubunutu?

 

HI slipq, welcome to the forum!

This problem is very common, in fact I normally copy all of the disk data to a folder on the Desktop and install from there. This could probably help with Wine not recognizing the drive.

You can also go to PlayOnLinux Configure, Wine Tab, Wine Configuration. In there you will find a Drives tab. You can map the optical drive to any folder you want. Maybe it just needs to be mapped to drive D:?

 

I did everything as you have writed. I have the game in 3 image file and when i have to insert the 2. one i opened playonlinux configuration / miscellaneous / Run a *.exe file in this virtual drive and i choosed RunGame.exe of the second disc. Then i went back to the window "insert the second disc" and pressed ok, but nothing happend. What should i do?

 

I had problems installing the game as well. Try using "AutoRun.exe" instead of "RunGame.exe"
Also make sure to copy all of data from both disks in to a folder on your desktop. This way it shouldn't ask for a second disc. It should just continue installing the game.
Let me know if this doesn't work, and I'll search for my discs and try installing it again.

 

When i mounted the first disc i used autorun.exe.

When you write "copy all ... to a folder" you mean all of the data should be copied into the same folder, or the content of disc 1 should be in folder 1, disc 2 in folder 2, disc 3 in folder 3 on my desktop? I mean the point is that the content of the disks have to be not on disk or in image file but simply on the computer or they have in the same folder?

THX!

 

Normally if I have a game with multiple discs, I will copy all of the contents from each disc into a single folder. You might get some over-write warnings, so normally I will click "skip" for duplicate files.
This works most of the time. Most multi-disc games have a data file or cab file with all the data, then they split them up into:

• data1.cab
• data2.cab
• data3.cab

so all of the game data can fit on mutiple discs. Its hard to know which file to copy, so I just copy all of disc1 into the folder, then disc2 into the folder and so on.