Telltale + Linux: A Definitive Guide

[covox]

clarsthemight: No treasure hunt option as of yet.

tofumeister: What version of Wine are you running (use "wine --version" at the command line to find out)? Chances are it's a bit old, as the Wine guys have fixed that regression. Either use the ttg-patch.py script, or upgrade to the latest version as per the instructions (1.1.32 or thereabouts).

desmoo: What graphics card do you have in your PC? Can you run any other GL software under Linux? When you use /desktop=Wine,800x600 , does the console log freeze up at any particular debug messages?

[bobdevis]

All the Telltale games can be run on Linux and Mac using VMWare Workstation 7 and VMWare Fusion respectively.

Why should you bother setting up a VMWare solution instead of just sticking with Wine?
Well because once you have it figured out, your virtual Windows if going to useful for a LOT of other stuff than TTG games. You can get a boatload of other stuff working that Wine has problems with.

What do I need to make this work?
-The new VMWare
-Windows XP (7 or 2000 might work but I am totally unsure)
-A PC with some muscle and a minimum of 2GB of RAM.
-A processor that supports the AMD-V or Intel VT-x instructions.
I have an AMD Phenom X4 9550, 4GB DDR2 Ram and a GForce8800GT. Tales of MI runs PERFECTLY fullscreen on 1680x1050 with graphics settings 6 out of 9.

How do I know if my proc has AMD-V or Intel VT-x instructions?
In Linux, open a console and do "cat /proc/cpuinfo".
The report you get should mention either "hvm" (for Intel) or "svm" (for AMD) in the "flags" section.
Look in your BIOS for a option to enable the virtualisation instructions. They are turned off by default. If you DO have the hvm or svm flags but DONT have an option in the BIOS to enable them you are screwed....unless the laptop manufacturer has a BIOS update for you.
These are Linux instructions. I am totally unsure how this works on a Mac.

Anything I need to know about the installation?
Install VMWare and install your virtual XP.
Make sure you enable the 3d acceleration of the guest, give the guest at least 1GB of RAM. Giving the guest 2 processor cores is a good idea.

What do I need to install on the guest XP?
Just the VMWare tools that come with VMWare. You may need to update DirectX and then reinstall VMWare Tools.
Don't bother with Windows update or anti-virus or anything. Just keep your guest offline, unless you need your TTG game activated.

Have fun with your fake windows!

[simcop2387]

Ok figure i'd post a quick oddity i've had. i've got a funny setup in /etc/asound.conf that lets me have seperate devices for my headphones (which are hooked up to the side speaker out on my card) and the default stereo speakers. I've been struggling to get the Wallace And Grommit 103 running, but sound wasn't working. I'd hit test in winecfg and it'd make the test sound and everything is fine. Running both at the same time (e.g. winecfg & wine WallaceGrommit103.exe) seems to get the sound working. Has to be a strange bug in wine, if i can track it down i'll file a bug report, but until then, maybe this'll help someone else.

[Rashleighp]

I've encountered the exact same sound situation but didn't realise that would fix it, thank you so much. I know have it running perfectly on karmic which amuses me a lot as it kept freezing and running slow in vista! Thanks all.

[boringCSGuy]

Has anyone managed to play through TOMI5 on wine? For me it crashes right after Guybrush steps through the portal at, what I assume is, the end of act 1. I'm using wine-1.1.34.

[torturedutopian]

No issue here.. (wine 1.1.34 ubuntu amd64, Geforce + some patches for Dragon Age)
(well, I'm not far yet, still around the crossing, oops so I guess my reply is not relevant, I'll come back later :-)

[ptepid]

Originally Posted by boringCSGuy

Has anyone managed to play through TOMI5 on wine? For me it crashes right after Guybrush steps through the portal at, what I assume is, the end of act 1. I'm using wine-1.1.34.

I'm having the same exact issue. Tried using both wine-1.1.33 and wine-1.1.34, and various nvidia driver version. I might give some older wine versions a try.

[Lapino]

I managed to finish the game with wine 1.1.33, so it is possible (and I didn't do any dirty tricks beside installing directx and winegecko).

[vEX]

I just downgraded to 1.1.33 and now it doesn't crash after the portal for me.
/me runs back to the game

[boringCSGuy]

Thanks. I downgraded to 1.1.31 and everything works for me.

[ChemBro]

So, Wine 1.1.39 introduced MSHTML support (or more support).

+ You can see "the background" of the ToMI game launcher.

- The button for entering the game is missing, so no more ToMI in Linux with 1.1.39.

I cannot enter the game anymore. I can downgrade (and will), but... How do you guys now try to enter the game?

[Avistew]

Just so you know: I tried doing all of that, and it's not working.

The only thing I can think of that's different is that the game is already installed, rather than installing it later on like you do in the guide.
I thought I might uninstall it and re-install it but the uninstall thingie doesn't work any more than the launcher does.

[Sloshy45]

As far as I know, Sam and Max season 1 work perfectly without patching for me on Ubuntu Karmic, so it can be removed from this sticky. One small last note, though: running the game in full-screen kinda messes up your panels, so I just run in windowed mode.

By the way, wouldn't it be great if Telltale supported Linux like it's starting to support Mac? Same thing (in a sense), right?

[torturedutopian]

Yeah, definitely, I tend to stop playing games with wine ; although it usually works pretty well, the games may always stop working with a wine update, new dll installs etc. So I prefer to support native games.

They could just support & provide packages for a few major distros... It's probably easier now that TT's frameworks is meant to build on OSX

[GozzoMan]

Originally Posted by Sloshy45

By the way, wouldn't it be great if Telltale supported Linux like it's starting to support Mac? Same thing (in a sense), right?

There's an exploring thread here

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/...ad.php?t=15041

[ido]

ttg_patch was broken for me, since the temp directory used by the program was "file://C:\\windows\\profiles\\ido\\Temp\\1B58505EB9864D30 A0CF53A184313AE6\\launcher\\index.html"
and not the expected "file://C:\\windows\\temp\\1B58505EB9864D30A0CF53A184313AE 6\\launcher\\index.html"

I've patched up ttg_patch and now it is working for me.
the diff file is

30c30
< grep = subprocess.Popen(["grep","-o","-m1",r"temp\\\\[A-Fa-f0-9]\{32\}\\\\launcher"], stdin=proc.stderr, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
---
> grep = subprocess.Popen(["grep","-o","-m1",r"file://.*\\\\[A-Fa-f0-9]\{32\}\\\\launcher"], stdin=proc.stderr, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
33,34c33,34
< tempkey = grep.communicate()[0][6:][:32]
< print "- Launcher found! Temp key used: " + tempkey
---
> tempkey = grep.communicate()[0]
> print "- Launcher found at: " + tempkey
42c42
< lpath += "/drive_c/windows/temp/" + tempkey + "/launcher"
---
> lpath += tempkey.replace("\\\\",'/').replace('file://C:','/drive_c').strip()

this should theoretically work on both versions of temp directory.

[tony_linux]

Hi,
I'm having trouble registering the activation code on Episode 2.
I have tried to launch it with the ttg-patch and without.
What happens is I get graphical "Please wait logging you in". After a second or two the screen changes to gray one with telltale logo on it. But no place to put the serial number.


Any solution?
Is there any other way to unlock the darn thing?
My wine version is 1.1.41.

Thanks!

-Tony

[ido]

try to downgrade wine to ver. 1.1.31
version 1.1.41 is buggy for telltale games, and the above version is the latest version which is still working for me.

[tony_linux]

Hey,
Thank you very much. Downgrading really worked =)

-Tony

[Caz]

Thanks v. much for your guide, I got everything working... up until the game loads (Logo with "Avast!" beneath it). Then it crashes and logs me out of my (computer) account. I tried it in window mode as suggested above, same result. Any idea why?