Topic: HowTo play Chaos Empire under Linux

[DrowElf]

postet originally from webwalker

There are many different ways to get it running, according to the many guides I found on the web.

1. Download from www.winehq.com WINE 20050524 precompiled rpm package.

2. Install the rpm, after the installation of Wine, run wineprefixcreate so that all the basic config files and directories are cerated for you under ~/.wine.

3. Make sure you have something like "/dev/cdrom /cdrom  iso9660 ro,noauto,users,unhide 0 0" in your /etc/fstab file, see section 3.5.1 of the wine documentation for reasons.

4. I already have a working installation of D2 LOD CE mod in a windows partition so I skipped the installation of the game files into the wine generated C drive.  But if you want to follow the recommended route to instal Diablo, follow instructions given in "http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=45231".  You can then apply the CE mod installation to give you CE LOD game play.  If all goes well you should have it all working and playing already, the rest of the steps you can ignore.

5. Next I created symbolic links to my CDROM and windows partiotion where my LOD installation sits.  Mandrake has already automatically created /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/win_e for me, all I havd to do was just to map these into dos drive letters for wine.  Goto ~/.wine/dosdevices, type "ln /mnt/cdrom f: --symbolic" and "lin /mnt/win_e e: --symbolic", lastly "ln /dev/hdc f:: --symbolic".  I used e: and f: because that's how my windows partiotions were setup.  Type ls -l to list the symbolic links, you should get:
lrwxrwxrwx  1 yourname yourname 10 Jul 23 00:02 c: -> ../drive_c/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 yourname yourname 10 Jul 23 22:53 e: -> /mnt/win_e/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 yourname yourname 10 Jul 23 22:54 f: -> /mnt/cdrom/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 yourname yourname  8 Jul 24 15:48 f:: -> /dev/hdc
lrwxrwxrwx  1 yourname yourname  1 Jul 23 00:02 z: -> //
c: and z: are created by wine automatically.

6. Create a config file under .wine if it doesn't already exist, it should contain the following:

WINE REGISTRY Version 2

[Version]
"Windows" = "nt40"
 
[dsound]
"HardwareAcceleration" = "Emulation"

7. Download a userdef.reg file from http://www.latte.ca/D2LOD/userdef.reg and modify the following lines:
"DiabloIICD"="f:"   ; Change "e:" to your CDs drive letter
"InstallPath"="e:\\Diablo II"
"Program"="e:\\Diablo II\\Diablo II.exe"   ; Same as above but add "\\Diablo II.exe" at the end
"Save Path"="e:\\Diablo II\\save\\"   ; Same as above but add "\\save\\" at the end
save this file in .wine.

8. I have a nVidia Vanta card which needed some proper Linux driver to get the glx mode going, so I downloaded from nVidia website a legacy linux driver installer and followed instructions to install.   Setup the XF86Config-4 file to make it use the GLX module and restarted X server.

9. Put the LOD CD into cdrom drive and mount /mnt/cdrom.

10. Change to /mnt/win_e/Diabloo\ II/, type in "wine D2VidTst.exe* to run the video test, choose the Glide drivers and exit.

11. Type "nice -5 wine "Diablo II.exe" -direct" and the thing starts.

Gameplay was very slow for me due to my inferior hardware, but it works!  Now if my bank account were nice to me, then I should be able to get some decent hardware......