Knowledge Base (Posts about wine)

Running "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (1996)" on desktop Linux

bgstack15 — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:36:00 GMT

I wanted to find how to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on my modern desktop Linux.

I conducted a bunch of research, but ended up getting it to install and run in Dosbox-X.

The short way

Install in a Dosbox-X instance. This worked on both Devuan GNU+Linux and a non-free operating system. Set the screen color depth to 256 colors before running the game.

Screenshot of Carmen Sandiego running in Dosbox-X

Aborted research

After installing the game in Dosbox-X but before I learned about the 256-color depth, I did some fdisk and dosfstools shenanigans to be able to do this:

Based on fdisk -l hdd.img, block size is 512 and hdd.img1 partition starts at block 63.

sudo mount -o loop,offset=$(( 512 * 63 )) ~/.dosbox-x/hdd.img ~/mnt/1

Then I could copy out C:\Program Files\Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego v3.0\

I configured wine to act like Windows 95. Then I had to install Xephyr, and then run:

# x8 is color depth.
Xephyr -screen 1024x768x8 :1

When I tried running wine Carmen32.exe it complained about quicktime. I mounted the iso and ran

wine ./setup32/qtwsetup/qt32inst.exe

From the iso. This let me install Quicktime 1.2.

Then with Xephyr running like earlier, I could get the game to run, but the colors were way off, like all filtered yellow-blue tint; in that off-color thing where if you could take the window full-screen and then back to windowed, might reset the graphics and display correctly in the olden days of a non-free OS. But I didn't know how to do that with Xephyr.

Fixing Lego Universe client after OS updates November

bgstack15 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 14:22:00 GMT

After the November OS updates, I could not run the client for Lego Universe anymore! It would fail with this mysterious error:

0024:err:winediag:ntlm_check_version ntlm_auth was not found. Make sure that ntlm_auth >= 3.0.25 is in your path. Usually, you can find it in the winbind package of your distribution.
0024:err:ntlm:ntlm_LsaApInitializePackage no NTLM support, expect problems
0024:err:module:loader_init "Awesomium.dll" failed to initialize, aborting
0024:err:module:loader_init Initializing dlls for L"C:\\lego-universe-client\\legouniverse.exe" failed, status c0000005

The ntlm stuff is bogus; that warning has shown up for a long time, and also this game doesn't use ntlm. The real problem is its inability to load Awesomium.dll, which is in the current directory with legouniverse.exe. Some brief Internet searching didn't show anything interesting with wine 10.0~repack-11 and loading dlls, so I decided to try downgrading. Because I couldn't remember the complicated commands related to fancy downgrading using aptitude, I eventually derived the command for apt, after preparing my snapshot list.

For file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/snapshot.list.

deb [check-valid-until=no] http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20251001T203719Z/ unstable main

The command that got the working wine version.

sudo apt --allow-downgrades install wine=10.0~repack-6 wine32=10.0~repack-6 wine64=10.0~repack-6 libwine=10.0~repack-6 libwine:i386=10.0~repack-6 fonts-wine=10.0~repack-6

And then for some reason file /usr/share/wine/nls/locale.nls was absent (probably the wine-common=10.0~repack-11 being removed causes a conflict with the installation of libwine=10.0~repack-6), so then I did the same command as above but with reinstall.

And now my game runs again. Hopefully this will be solved by a future wine rebuild in Debian.

Screenshot of Lego Universe client running again

Summarizing my ways to access old environments

bgstack15 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:58:00 GMT

Sometimes, I want to run old software from my non-free days.

DOS

I can use Dosbox or FreeDOS. These have always worked and are readily available.

Windows 3.1

I use DOSBox for this, already in my internal package win31games.

Windows 9x

There's no need for Windows 95 when Windows 98SE will work in Dosbox-X and 99.99% of software worked on the latter.

Windows XP

While I have a Thinkpad G40 somewhere with a real floppy disk drive and that runs Windows XP, I haven't need this environment specifically. Most XP-targetting software runs just great in wine.

Windows 7

If Wine does not suffice, then I have Windows 7 running in a qemu spice-enabled VM on EL9 which should be supported to approximately 2029. I haven't really needed Windows 7 specifically in a very long time, and I suspect my need for it will only dwindle.

Patching Lego Universe to not crash in wine

bgstack15 — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 13:46:00 GMT

The old non-free OS game Lego Universe runs moderately well in Wine. However, it does tend to crash with errors like the following.

0138:err:virtual:allocate_virtual_memory out of memory for allocation, base (nil) size 00100000

Usually when entering a different region and the game is clearly trying to load all the assets for this region. The game will freeze up for a second, and then crash. What solved the errors was using a 4GB Patch – NTCore utility that patches the binary headers so the program can address more than 2GB of RAM.

That was it! This small program works in Wine. You pass it a binary name to patch. I backed up the file, of course, and the differences are very small.

Screenshot of vimdiff :!xxd for the files

References

4GB Patch – NTCore found from Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) · Issue #4362 · doitsujin/dxvk

Failed research

From https://simpler-website.pages.dev/html/2021/1/wine-environment-variables/

export __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
# specifically for my setup from `vulkaninfo | grep -i 'gpu id :'`
export DXVK_FILTER_DEVICE_NAME="Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)"

From https://github.com/UchuServer/Uchu experimental

export WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8.dll=n,b"

I tried winetricks d3dx9_43 but it didn't help. I then realized it uses d3dx9_34 but that didn't help either. I tried using wine first, then native, but that breaks the game and rendering even on the login screen.

From https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=36996

winetricks l3codecx directshow wmp10 # but skipped wmp10; these did not help

From https://askubuntu.com/questions/835039/games-not-running-properly

# regedit HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D -> string VideoMemorySize = 512

From https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=167002 # regedit HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D -> VideoMemorySize=2048, DirectDrawRenderer=""

I also tried winetricks dxvk which also added d3dcompiler_43 d3dx9 d3dcompiler_47 dxvk but this completely broke the game. So I reset my wineprefix afterwards.

I didn't record where this came from, but this didn't help.

echo $(( 1024 * 1024 )) | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes

Playing Capture to Conquer on Linux

bgstack15 — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:33:00 GMT

Here's a small little game from the past, that I used to play. It's a pleasant diversion I rediscovered when going through old files: Capture to Conquer. This is very, very different from Command & Conquer.

Some web links about the game:

The point of the game is to take over the small board. It feels like stratego combined with checkers: every spot is occupied, and you can take ownership of it by attacking with a superior unit. The single-player campaign has a series of missions with different starting configurations, but the end goal is usually controlling the entire board, or sometimes capturing an enemy flag.

You're subject to the whims of the RNG, and I swear at least one mission depends on checking the box in the settings for, "attacker only loses one rank when capturing."

To run this game in Wine on Linux, you need a very short list of steps. If necessary, to separate it from other prefixes, make a windows 98 one. I didn't try any other target versions, but the game ran back in the '98 days, so why waste time with any other version?

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-win98 WINEARCH=win32
wineboot # to establish the new prefix
winetricks win98
winetricks vb6run comdlg32ocx native_oleaut32

That's it. Of course cd to the directory containing the executable before running it, like most (Windows) programs.

cd ~/".wine-win98/drive_c/Capture to Conquer"
export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-win98 WINEARCH=win32
wine CTC.exe

Here are some images.

Campaign list at 100% completion

Game board

See, it is possible to win the campaign!

Set wine theme from cli

bgstack15 — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:04:00 GMT

I spent time configuring a new wine prefix with the boring, office-gray theme. I do that every time, because the default (that started within the past year or so) is to have the theme "Light" which looks white and puffy and annoying.

Before:

Run the following registry file with this command.

wine regedit use-theme-none.reg

files/2024/listings/use-theme-none.reg (Source)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
# File: use-theme-none.reg
# Location: /mnt/public/Support/Programs/wine/
# Author: bgstack15
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only
# Startdate: 2024-08-14-4 21:20
# Title: Theme None registry keys
# Purpose: Oneliner to set theme none in a new wine prefix
# History:
# Usage:
#    wine regedit use-theme-none.reg
# References:
#    https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Zeinok/ceaf6ff204792dde0ae31e0199d89398/raw/a5f0d3efb309d6d0728e1e54579e5c1081cf0d22/wine-breeze-dark.reg
#    https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=394382
#    https://superuser.com/questions/380156/delete-registry-key-or-value-via-a-cmd-script/1041579#1041579
# Alternatives:
#    winecfg, tab Desktop Integration -> Theme (no theme)
# Improve:
# Documentation:
#    Exported from a blank wine prefix and customized. Had to s/\\\\/\\/g, and prepend HKCU to all places. Had to switch header to "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" and remove a ;; comment about a key prefix.
#arch=win64

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors] 1723684031
#time=1daeeaf754f3e32
"ActiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"ActiveTitle"="10 36 106"
"Background"="58 110 165"
"ButtonAlternateFace"="181 181 181"
"ButtonDkShadow"="64 64 64"
"ButtonFace"="212 208 200"
"ButtonLight"="212 208 200"
"ButtonShadow"="128 128 128"
"GradientActiveTitle"="166 202 240"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="192 192 192"
"GrayText"="128 128 128"
"Hilight"="10 36 106"
"HotTrackingColor"="0 0 200"
"InactiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"InactiveTitleText"="212 208 200"
"InfoWindow"="255 255 225"
"Menu"="212 208 200"
"MenuBar"="212 208 200"
"MenuHilight"="10 36 106"
"Scrollbar"="212 208 200"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] 1723684031
#time=1daeeaf7552a34c
"UserPreferencesMask"=hex:30,00,00,80,12,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] 1723684031
#time=1daeeaf7553711e
"CaptionFont"=hex:f3,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\
  00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"CaptionHeight"="-270"
"CaptionWidth"="-270"
"IconFont"=hex:f5,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,00,\
  00,00,01,00,00,00,22,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"MenuFont"=hex:f5,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,00,\
  00,00,01,00,00,00,00,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"MenuHeight"="-270"
"MenuWidth"="-270"
"MessageFont"=hex:f5,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\
  00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"ScrollHeight"="-240"
"ScrollWidth"="-240"
"SmCaptionFont"=hex:f5,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,\
  00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,22,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"SmCaptionHeight"="-225"
"SmCaptionWidth"="-225"
"StatusFont"=hex:f5,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\
  00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,54,00,61,00,68,00,6f,00,6d,00,61,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager] 1723684031
#time=1daeeaf754f0868
"ColorName"=-
"DllName"=-
"LoadedBefore"=-
"SizeName"=-
"ThemeActive"="0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize] 1723684031
#time=1daeeaf754f020a
"AppsUseLightTheme"=dword:00000001
"SystemUsesLightTheme"=dword:00000001

References

X11 wine window not visible: Jazz Jackrabbit 2

bgstack15 — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 13:51:19 GMT

One of my applications, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, had a problem where the window would not be visible, but the game is running.

After testing with using a wine virtual desktop environment (failed) and a different wine context (worked), I realized the problem lies between wine and the game. I learned that by deleting the registry key the game uses to store its window state (full screen or windowed) was somehow invalid or incorrect.

HKLM\Software\Epic MegaGames\Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Special Edition

And anywhere else this Software path would be in the registry, such as HKCU. And then run the game, and you can view the game.

And a link to the JJ2 community: Jazz Jackrabbit Online - Jazz Jackrabbit News, Information and Downloads on Jazz Jackrabbit 1, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and Jazz Jackrabbit Advance - Jazz2Online

Alternate research

I had done a lot of searching for x11 make window visible. How you would do that is with xdotool:

$ xwininfo -root -children | grep -i mktrayicon
     0x1c00001 "mktrayicon": ("mktrayicon" "Mktrayicon")  10x10+10+10  +10+10

And then you can plug in the id force it to be visible.

$ xdotool windowmap 0x1c00001

But even after doing that with JJ2 did not make the game contents display.

Photoshop CS4 in Wine

bgstack15 — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 13:34:49 GMT

PhotoShop CS4 works in Wine after you install a few components.

env WINEARCH=win64 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-photoshop winetricks gdiplus corefonts

Installing it was a black box that I cannot yet confirm how I accomplished it.

Wine error: Couldn't get desktop folder

bgstack15 — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 14:11:57 GMT

I copied a wine prefix to a different user, and was then unable to start my application. I struggled to get the app to work, and started backtracking to see if I could get more info. I learned that even explorer.exe was not working in Wine. I don't control that at all! That's a built-in component of Wine. So if that doesn't work, I've really messed something up!

WINEPREFIX=/home/bgstack15/.wine WINEARCH=win64 wine explorer.exe

When explorer.exe doesn't work in wine, you KNOW you have a problem! Here is the output of the error message.

Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x00000000 in 32-bit code (0x0040be65).
Register dump:
 CS:0023 SS:002b DS:002b ES:002b FS:006b GS:0063
 EIP:0040be65 ESP:0078f7a0 EBP:0078fe68 EFLAGS:00010206(  R- --  I   - -P- )
 EAX:80070057 EBX:008a38c0 ECX:00000000 EDX:7149b720
 ESI:0089c980 EDI:0078f854
Stack dump:
0x0078f7a0:  0089cc48 00000000 00000000 0089ca88
0x0078f7b0:  00000000 00000000 00000280 00000018
0x0078f7c0:  0001005c 00000000 00400000 00000000
0x0078f7d0:  00000064 00891cc2 000000c4 00000000
0x0078f7e0:  7bc27600 688df3d0 00000000 00000000
0x0078f7f0:  008a1ffc 008a2004 01322014 0078f820
Backtrace:
=>0 0x0040be65 IShellFolder_Release+0x9(This=<internal error>) [Y:\include\shobjidl.h:1707] in explorer (0x0078fe68)
  1 0x0040be65 make_explorer_window+0x82a(params=<internal error>) [Y:\programs\explorer\explorer.c:372] in explorer (0x0078fe68)
  2 0x0040be65 wWinMain+0x995(hinstance=<couldn't compute location>, previnstance=<couldn't compute location>, cmdline=<couldn't compute location>, cmdshow=<couldn't compute location>) [Y:\programs\explorer\explorer.c:927] in explorer (0x0078fe68)
  3 0x00410568 wmain+0xa8(argc=<couldn't compute location>, argv=<couldn't compute location>) [Y:\dlls\msvcrt\crt_wwinmain.c:55] in explorer (0x0078fef8)
  4 0x004104b8 wmainCRTStartup+0x68() [Y:\dlls\msvcrt\crt_wmain.c:60] in explorer (0x0078ff30)
  5 0x7b6293e0 in kernel32 (+0x293e0) (0x0078ff48)
  6 0x7bc5ca37 in ntdll (+0x5ca37) (0x0078ff5c)
  7 0x7bc5d258 in ntdll (+0x5d258) (0x0078ffec)
0x0040be65 wWinMain+0x995 [Y:\programs\explorer\explorer.c:927] in explorer: movl   0x0(%ecx),%eax
Unable to access file 'Y:\programs\explorer\explorer.c'
Modules:
Module  Address         Debug info  Name (60 modules)
PE  00400000-0048f000   Dwarf-4         explorer
PE  00b40000-00d5f000   Deferred        rpcrt4
PE  016a0000-01b2c000   Deferred        ole32
PE  01b30000-01bb6000   Deferred        winex11
PE  01cb0000-020ec000   Deferred        actxprxy
PE  62500000-628ff000   Deferred        oleaut32
PE  63080000-630aa000   Deferred        zlib1
PE  64a80000-64ad8000   Deferred        win32u
PE  65680000-65900000   Deferred        msvcrt
PE  66080000-66180000   Deferred        shlwapi
PE  66640000-6665c000   Deferred        version
PE  667c0000-66809000   Deferred        shcore
PE  67500000-67552000   Deferred        imm32
PE  67bc0000-6805e000   Deferred        comctl32
PE  684c0000-68610000   Deferred        combase
PE  68880000-68d46000   Deferred        user32
PE  69840000-69938000   Deferred        advapi32
PE  6aac0000-6ada1000   Deferred        ucrtbase
PE  6bbc0000-6bc59000   Deferred        sechost
PE  6bc80000-6bcec000   Deferred        explorerframe
PE  6da80000-6dc9c000   Deferred        gdi32
PE  70d80000-70e23000   Deferred        uxtheme
PE  71400000-720ab000   Deferred        shell32
PE  7b000000-7b51a000   Deferred        kernelbase
PE  7b600000-7b757000   Dwarf-4         kernel32
PE  7bc00000-7beba000   Dwarf-4         ntdll
ELF 7d000000-7d005000   Deferred        <wine-loader>
ELF 7f416000-7f41e000   Deferred        libxfixes.so.3
ELF 7f41e000-7f42b000   Deferred        libxcursor.so.1
ELF 7f42b000-7f440000   Deferred        libxi.so.6
ELF 7f440000-7f445000   Deferred        libxcomposite.so.1
ELF 7f445000-7f454000   Deferred        libxrandr.so.2
ELF 7f454000-7f462000   Deferred        libxrender.so.1
ELF 7f462000-7f469000   Deferred        libxxf86vm.so.1
ELF 7f469000-7f46e000   Deferred        libxinerama.so.1
ELF 7f46e000-7f47d000   Deferred        libmd.so.0
ELF 7f47d000-7f494000   Deferred        libbsd.so.0
ELF 7f494000-7f49b000   Deferred        libxdmcp.so.6
ELF 7f49b000-7f4a0000   Deferred        libxau.so.6
ELF 7f4a0000-7f4ce000   Deferred        libxcb.so.1
ELF 7f4ce000-7f61f000   Deferred        libx11.so.6
ELF 7f61f000-7f635000   Deferred        libxext.so.6
ELF 7f64d000-7f6d7000   Deferred        winex11.so
ELF 7f6f7000-7f723000   Deferred        libexpat.so.1
ELF 7f723000-7f772000   Deferred        libfontconfig.so.1
ELF 7f772000-7f795000   Deferred        libbrotlicommon.so.1
ELF 7f795000-7f7b2000   Deferred        libz.so.1
ELF 7f7b2000-7f881000   Deferred        libfreetype.so.6
ELF 7f881000-7f986000   Deferred        libm.so.6
ELF 7fe0e000-7fe18000   Deferred        libuuid.so.1
ELF 7fe18000-7fe55000   Deferred        libpng16.so.16
ELF 7fe6d000-7ffe0000   Deferred        win32u.so
ELF f7c00000-f7e28000   Deferred        libc.so.6
ELF f7e2f000-f7ede000   Deferred        ntdll.so
ELF f7ee0000-f7ee5000   Deferred        libpthread.so.0
ELF f7ee5000-f7eea000   Deferred        libdl.so.2
ELF f7eea000-f7ef4000   Deferred        libgtk3-nocsd.so.0
ELF f7ef7000-f7f05000   Deferred        libbrotlidec.so.1
ELF f7f05000-f7f0a000   Dwarf           libwine.so.1
ELF f7f14000-f7f49000   Deferred        ld-linux.so.2
Threads:
process  tid      prio    name (all IDs are in hex)
00000020 start.exe
    00000024    0     
00000038 services.exe
    0000003c    0     
    00000040    0     wine_rpcrt4_server
    0000004c    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    00000050    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    00000064    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    00000084    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    00000090    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    000000b0    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    000000d8    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    000000dc    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    000000e0    0     wine_threadpool_waitqueue
    00000114    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
00000044 svchost.exe
    00000048    0     
    00000054    0     
    00000058    0     wine_sechost_service
0000005c winedevice.exe
    00000060    0     
    00000068    0     
    0000006c    0     wine_sechost_service
    00000070    0     
    00000074    0     
    00000078    0     
    000000e4    0     
0000007c winedevice.exe
    00000080    0     
    00000088    0     
    0000008c    0     wine_sechost_service
    00000094    0     
    00000098    0     
    0000009c    0     
    000000a0    0     
    000000a4    0     
000000a8 plugplay.exe
    000000ac    0     
    000000b4    0     
    000000b8    0     wine_sechost_service
    000000bc    0     wine_rpcrt4_server
000000e8 conhost.exe
    000000ec    0     
000000f0 (D) C:\windows\syswow64\explorer.exe
    000000f4    0 <== 
    00000138    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    00000154    0     
000000f8 explorer.exe
    000000fc    0     
    00000100    0     
    00000104    0     wine_rpcrt4_server
    00000134    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    0000013c    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    00000140    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    00000144    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    00000148    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
0000010c rpcss.exe
    00000110    0     
    00000118    0     
    0000011c    0     wine_sechost_service
    00000120    0     wine_rpcrt4_server
    00000124    0     wine_rpcrt4_server
    00000128    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
    0000012c    0     wine_threadpool_worker
    00000130    0     wine_rpcrt4_io
System information:
    Wine build: wine-8.0-rc1 (Debian 8.0~rc1~repack-1)
    Platform: i386 (WOW64)
    Version: Windows 7
    Host system: Linux
    Host version: 6.1.0-1-amd64

I finally noticed this little message on the command line:

00fc:err:wineboot:ProcessStartupItems Couldn't get desktop folder.

Who would have thought that this would be significant? When I bothered to read it, I checked:

[bgstack15@pcb-006|/home/bgstack15/.wine/drive_c/users]$ ll bgstack15/
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 bgstack15 bgstack15 4096 Jan 10 21:00 AppData/

When most "C:\users\bgstack15\" directories resemble:

$ ls -l ~/.wine/drive_c/users/bgstack15
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 bgstack15 bgstack15 4096 Jan 10 21:00 AppData/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   21 Jan 10 21:10 Desktop -> /home/bgstack15/Desktop/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   23 Jan 10 21:10 Documents -> /home/bgstack15/Documents/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   23 Jan 10 21:10 Downloads -> /home/bgstack15/Downloads/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   19 Jan 10 21:10 Music -> /home/bgstack15/Music/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   22 Jan 10 21:10 Pictures -> /home/bgstack15/Pictures/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bgstack15 bgstack15   20 Jan 10 21:10 Videos -> /home/bgstack15/Videos/

So I fixed this weird wine error with:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/users/bgstack15 ; for word in Desktop Documents Downloads Music Pictures Videos ; do ln -s ~/"${word}" . ; done

Which means that I made the symlinks that go to those real directories, and then Wine would work! This happened because the wineprefix came from a different user in Linux, so even the drive C user directory was different, and somehow it just didn't bother making a fully fleshed-out user directory there.

Fixing gamepad for Wine game

bgstack15 — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 12:44:17 GMT

I finally got fed up with Wine's malfunction quite a few months ago about it passing my gamepads to Jazz Jackrabbit 2. For some reason, after a software update, the controllers did not work correctly.

Today, I spent a bunch of time researching how to adjust the mapping of the gamepads. I found a great tool which helped write custom SDL gamepad mapping strings, SDL2 Gamepad Tool by General Arcade. It is an interactive mapping tool where it guides you to press each button on your controller and it generates the right string.

Solution

I never got that string to work correctly with Wine, but I ended up solving my problem by adjusting the Wine registry. I ended up merely setting the key

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WineBus\Map Controllers (REG_DWORD) = 0x0

The relevant snippet from that link.

+->Map Controllers [DWORD value (REG_DWORD): Enable (0x1, default) or disable (0x0) conversion from SDL controllers to XInput-compatible gamepads. Only applies to SDL backend.]

And then, all my buttons worked, and my two-axis dpad worked!

Additional research

I spent quite a while trying to customize the mappings, which didn't seem to stick when I tried them in the Wine registry in a few places.

HKCU\Software\Wine\DirectInput\"Tomee USB SNES Controller" = "X,Y"


HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WineBus\Map\"auniquename" = "03000000bd12000015d0000010010000,Tomee SNES USB Controller,platform:Linux,a:b2,b:b1,x:b3,y:b0,back:b8,start:b9,leftshoulder:b4,rightshoulder:b5,dpup:-a1,dpdown:+a1,dpleft:-a0,dpright:+a0,"

I'm pretty sure Wine doesn't honor the environment variable SDL_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG, because it wants to use the Registry key above, which actually I never got it to work.

I wrote a little C program by adapting a large number of examples, mostly from the SDL2 documentation.

// File: js1.c
// Startdate: 2022-06-29
// Purpose: Test my C skills, while trying to test SDL2 game controller stuff
// References:
// http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.15/docs/html/guideinput.html
// https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_GameControllerMapping
// https://stackoverflow.com/q/29589982
// https://generalarcade.com/gamepadtool/
// https://wiki.winehq.org/Useful_Registry_Keys
// https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamepad
// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29589982/does-sdl-on-linux-support-more-than-one-gamepad-joystick
// Dependencies:
//    sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev
// Documentation:
// try SDL_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG env var.
#include "SDL2/SDL.h"
SDL_Joystick *joy;
SDL_GameController *ctrl;
char *guid[33];
char *mapping;
const char *newmapping = "03000000bd12000015d0000010010000,Tomee SNES USB Controller,platform:Linux,a:b2,b:b1,x:b3,y:b0,back:b8,start:b9,leftshoulder:b4,rightshoulder:b5,dpup:-a1,dpdown:+a1,dpleft:-a0,dpright:+a0,";
int main () {
   if (SDL_Init( SDL_INIT_VIDEO | SDL_INIT_JOYSTICK ) < 0)
   {
      fprintf(stderr, "Couldn't initialize SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
      exit(1);
   }
   SDL_InitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_JOYSTICK);
   SDL_InitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_GAMECONTROLLER);
   printf("%i joysticks were found.\n\n", SDL_NumJoysticks() );
   printf("The names of the joysticks are:\n");
   for( int i=0; i < SDL_NumJoysticks(); i++ )
   {
      joy = SDL_JoystickOpen(i);
        if (joy) {
            printf("Opened joystick #%d \"%s\"\n", i, SDL_JoystickNameForIndex(i));
            printf("Axes count: %d\n", SDL_JoystickNumAxes(joy));
            printf("Button count: %d\n", SDL_JoystickNumButtons(joy));
            printf("Ball count: %d\n", SDL_JoystickNumBalls(joy));
            SDL_JoystickGetGUIDString(SDL_JoystickGetGUID(joy),*guid,sizeof(guid));
            printf("GUID string: \"%s\"\n",guid);
            if (SDL_IsGameController(i)) {
                ctrl = SDL_GameControllerOpen(i);
                mapping = SDL_GameControllerMapping(ctrl);
                printf("Mapping: \"%s\"\n", mapping);
                SDL_free(mapping);
                printf("Trying new mapping.\n");
                int r = SDL_GameControllerAddMapping(newmapping);
                printf("Result: %d.\n", r);
            }
        }
   }
   return 0;
}

And a makefile to make it faster to build.

CC=gcc
SRC = $(wildcard *.c)
OBJS = $(patsubst %.c, %.o, $(SRC))
NAME = js1

all: $(NAME)
.PHONY: clean

$(NAME): $(OBJS)
    $(CC) $(shell pkg-config --cflags sdl2 ) $< $(shell pkg-config --libs sdl2 ) -o $@

clean:
    rm -f $(OBJS) $(NAME)