FFXI on Wine

[Pandoraxero]

this is a polished up crosspost from alla

first, Some information on my hardware (and software):
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 754 (yes, it's a fossil)
2048MB DDR 333 RAM
NVidia GeForce 6800 GPU, 256MB vram, AGP8x
Swap Partition ~4GB
Gentoo Linux AMD64, kernel 2.6.25-r4
nvidia driver version 173.14.12

Things I Did

• rm -r ~/.wine (to remove all traces of a previous installation attempt)
• wine ~/nfs/FFXI\ 2008\ Collection/PlayOnline/setup.exe (worked just fine)
• winecfg - added pol.exe to the Applications tab, set pol.exe to run in a virtual desktop at 640x480, set Default settings to run everything else in a virtual desktop at 1024x768
• cp ~/nfs/dxdiagn.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/
• wine regsvr32 C:\\windows\\system32\\dxdiagn.dll
• ran winecfg and set the dlloverride for dxdiagn to native only
• wine C:\\Program\ Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\PlayOnlineViewer\\polcfg\\polcfg.exe - set to run fullscreen
• wine C:\\Program\ Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\PlayOnlineViewer\\pol.exe (minor graphical glitches may occur, including screen flipping)
• POL updates with copious amounts of output to xterm
• POL update successful. it restarts POL on its own now, which it never did pre-wine1.0. There are audio glitches, bgm stops playing on login.
• Installing FFXI and Expansion Content.
• installations successful, albeit with a lack of the background art and changing image that normally shows during installation
• Activating content ID and attempting to update ffxi.
• Plenty of console output on the updates... no errors.
• Update Success... at this point, you'll need to change some settings, so logout of pol the usual way
• wine C:\\Program\ Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\FINAL\ FANTASY\ XI\\ToolsUS\\FINAL\ FANTASY\ XI\ Config.exe - and set it to run in windowed mode edit 2 per self. instruction was missing.
• wine C:\\Program\ Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\FINAL\ FANTASY\ XI\\ToolsUS\\polboot.exe edit 1 per gani's suggestion
• Lobby Server Connection Failed - If you get this, its because your dns server does not know your machine's hostname. try setting hostname to "localhost", or adding a reference on your DNS server
• Login SHOULD work now

Steps to increase framerate once on

• hit F1
• hit enter
• hit the chat button
• activate any macro that has chat text in it

update 3 per ganiman/self, edit 4 per self

Please note that all my testing was done with a copy of wine compiled from wine's own git repository. You can obtain the most bleeding-edge, up-to-date wine code from there
shameless unpaid advertising of open-source software follows:
Network troubleshooting was done with Wireshark
My Network's router runs OpenWrt, A Custom Linux Firmware which I credit for making it so that i could do advanced DNS settings
As stated above, my computer runs Gentoo Linux. Linux for people who love Linux.

edit = formatting

[Eracle]

OMG... You got FFXI to run in linux? I tried and tried and tried for ages, I couldn't get Wine(or any other apps) to work with it running Ubuntu Linux. If this actually works I'm totally dumping all my windows junk and switching back to linux.

[Baelorn]

If this works you're my hero. This was the only thing stopping me from putting Linux on my laptop and I don't want to dualboot just for FFXI.

[Ganiman]

Excellent - I've been trying to pay attention to the progress of FFXI running under Linux/Wine on vanachat - there are at least 2 people there who have FFXI working in Wine. FFXI is also the top voted appliction at Winehq to be fixed, so I expect we'll see even more development in favor of FFXI. I will hopefully try (again) at getting FFXI to run on my gentoo laptop (more than enough hardware) this weekend and post my results. Screenshots of anyone's progress would be excellent to see as well.

[Pandoraxero]

oh, i probably should have said so earlier, but at present, it runs unbearably slow (on the order of 1-2 fps) even with the latest code.

[ninesunz]

eee gads 2fps!

[Pandoraxero]

and apparently input other than arrow keys and enter fails. someone posted about having a patch for it, but the wine team is slow to catch on. they haven't TOUCHED imm since the patch was mentioned.

[Laraul]

I've gotten the benchmark to run using VMware Fusion for MacOS X. It get's like 5-15 FPS. Resolution doesn't really influence anything since the VM is translating all the D3D to OpenGL on the fly. This is not WINE, though I am sure it would run the full game if I tried. (I beleive other ppl have).

[Cubia]

I've gotten the benchmark to run using VMware Fusion for MacOS X. It get's like 5-15 FPS. Resolution doesn't really influence anything since the VM is translating all the D3D to OpenGL on the fly. This is not WINE, though I am sure it would run the full game if I tried. (I beleive other ppl have).

The current vmware beta for linux does run ffxi. laggy but very usable if you are crafting farming etc.

[Ganiman]

Itachi said he was running FFXI in wine at 800x600 and it was very playable.

[Pandoraxero]

Itachi said he was running FFXI in wine at 800x600 and it was very playable.

i see. had to grep thru an ungodly amount of logs, though.

I'll see if i can figure out the patch he was hinting at and see if i can submit it to the wine bugzilla proper. which, to date, no one has done.

[Degare]

So ummm. Please forgive me, but why Linux? Whats so great about it Vs windows?

[Eltoshan]

So ummm. Please forgive me, but why Linux? Whats so great about it Vs windows?

This is probably the best analogy I can come up with during my 15 minute break.

Linux -- Prototype GAT-X105 Strike Gundam

Windows -- Mass-produced GAT-07 Strike Daggers

[Ganiman]

Do not turn this thread into a Linux vs Windows thread. Please keep this clean and informative. Have OS debates in another topic please.

[Ganiman]

I am in the process of upgrading my gentoo installation on my laptop once that is complete I will attempt to install FFXI.