Box86 and Wine on RPi4

[George]

Wow, step away for a couple of days, come back and see 50+ new messages! Awesome to see the activity.

@mth75 and @Folly thanks for all the tips, pointers, help, and everything so far! @mth75 thank you especially for creating the thread for what software is working in Box86/Wine. @shavecat welcome and I hope you've got some things working.

As per @mth75's last note, Box86 is updated to v0.2.0. I'm testing it out and will update the scripts shortly. Mesa is now updated to 20.3.3 and Wine is now at 6.0~rc6, so I'm testing all three at the same time. If all goes well, I'll be updating the repository. Keep in mind that Space Cadet 3D Pinball will disappear from that branch, but will still be located in the branch "spacecadet". This is so it won't be part of the pull request. It will also by that time hopefully include the patch to enable music playback (which I haven't started on).

I should also note that Box86 has a vibrant community on Discord if you use it. It's located at https://discord.gg/Fh8sjmu. They have a channel that specifically talks about Wine. It's very active. Many people are using it from TwisterOS which is another Raspberry Pi OS distribution, but with Box86 and other additions. Check it out: https://twisteros.com/ It works rather well, but my primary Pi experience is through RetroPie, hence these scripts and this conversation.

@mth75 thank you especially for creating the thread for what software is working in Box86/Wine. You may also be interested to find this list of Box86 compatible software: https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86-compatibility-list/issues

It seems that Wine Tricks is a valuable part of the Wine experience, even on desktop computers. I'm thinking of adding it as part of the Wine install script. What does everyone think about that?

- George

[shavecat]

@george
Hey Thanks a lot ! :)
I got Commandos 1 & 2 working
and Heroes of might and Magic 3 ! :))

Will love to see ONI , Enter-the-Matrix , Black&White , Warcraft 3 ...
I did try them but with no success .
And for some reason age of empires 2 give me a bad graphics error .
For now ...

It seems that Wine Tricks is a valuable part of the Wine experience, even on desktop computers. I'm thinking of adding it as part of the Wine install script. What does everyone think about that?

Will love to see that ! :)

[Folly]

@george

Indeed, it would be nice if you could add winetricks.

I will have a look at those channels you mentioned.

[dodonpachi]

So with all the posts I kind of got lost on the actual instructions to set this up. I need to update Retropie, then update Retropie setup script, then install Box86, Wine, and Mesa?

And where do I put the games after that?

[Folly]

@dodonpachi

Are you willing to experiment ?

Can you copy and paste commands in the terminal and do you have some knowledge of terminal commands ?

If you want to add your own software, then you are basically on your own to install.
Because everything is quite experimental up till now.
So you have to know a lot about :

• The terminal
• How retropie works
• How wine works
• How scriptmodules work
• ....

[mth75]

@george said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

It seems that Wine Tricks is a valuable part of the Wine experience, even on desktop computers. I'm thinking of adding it as part of the Wine install script. What does everyone think about that?

Hi George, for those who will make installs on their RetroPie's, Winetricks would be mandatory. But like @Folly says, you really a need kind of staging or development install (in essence to make wine-prefixes).

[shavecat]

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 *
Not playable always freeze in different places :(

[George]

Some updates. I've updated my repo with the latest scripts for Mesa, Box86, Wine, and Space Cadet. I've removed Space Cadet from the branch that I'm doing my pull request with, but as I mentioned before, I have a new branch that it is available on.

https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/tree/spacecadet

Everything has been updated on that branch as well, and I will continue to sync the branches as development continues.

So what is new:

• Mesa is updated to v20.3.3
• Box86 is updated to v0.2.0
• Wine is updated to v6.0 Stable (also side note - for some reason their platform code changed from "buster" to "buster-1". I have no idea why, but I added some code to make that easier to change).
• Winetricks is now installed as part of installing Wine. Because of the simple window manager being used though, the Winetricks GUI only shows up on the bottom half of my screen. I'm not sure if there is any way to change that. It seems to work well though and can access my default Wine Prefix.
• Space Cadet 3D Pinball now has a patch in it to enable MIDI music correctly!

I should note that while I've tested everything out with my current install, I have yet to do a test with a completely fresh install. So, as always, be careful.

If you don't want to fiddle with moving your RetroPie-Setup directory in order to test these, you could do the following instead.

wget -nv -O /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/mesa.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/spacecadet/scriptmodules/supplementary/mesa.sh
wget -nv -O /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/emulators/box86.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/spacecadet/scriptmodules/emulators/box86.sh
wget -nv -O /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/wine.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/spacecadet/scriptmodules/ports/wine.sh
wget -nv -O /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/spacecadet3dpinball.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/spacecadet/scriptmodules/ports/spacecadet3dpinball.sh

This basically just uses wget to retrieve the 4 files and then puts them directly where they need to go. Hope that helps.

Enjoy!

- George

[shavecat]

*Solved

[Folly]

@george , Great work again !

I installed your scripts on a fresh OS.
Everything installed faster now.
Wine configuration was ok :

• I also could install mono and gecko while configurating.
• Now the explorer works like it should
• Now the desktop works like it should, install/add programs works too now

Installed spacecadet, music was ok, but there were no sounds.
Tested both :

• music and sound on
• music off, sound on

Then tested the Remakes, F1Spirit doesn't work, the others had no sound.

I was able to fix all sound issues by selecting hdmi-1 or headphone-0 again, in raspi-config.

Seems my audio suffers from updates :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/26628/audio-issues-after-latest-raspbian-updates-june-2020

Will try some more stuff.

[DTEAM]

@folly
Could It be possible to play on Pi4 games like Delta Force and Commando 1 and 2 with Box86 and Wine? I started to read this post and It's very interesting!

[mth75]

@dteam said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

@folly
Could It be possible to play on Pi4 games like Delta Force and Commando 1 and 2 with Box86 and Wine? I started to read this post and It's very interesting!

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29241/the-what-works-with-box86-wine-topic-on-the-rpi4-400?_=1610811750688&lang=en-US

Screenshots also in this topic :-). Commando's 2 also works but with sound (wine) issues.

[mth75]

@shavecat said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 *
Not playable always freeze in different places :(

If you have something working, would you be so kind to post a reply (with screenshot if possible :-) in:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29241/the-what-works-with-box86-wine-topic-on-the-rpi4-400?_=1610811750688&lang=en-US

[shavecat]

Can i install a DirectX or somting like that ?
That will maybe fix my age of emperies 2
and heroes 3 ?

[George]

@shavecat you might be able to do it using Winetricks. Alternatively, you could take a look at one of these guides.

• https://www.dedoimedo.com/games/wine-directx.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20100417001826/http://www.wine-reviews.net/wine-reviews/microsoft/directx-90c-march-2008-redistributable-on-linux-with-wine.html

This is also a link to the redistributable file from Microsoft.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=8109

I did it a while back, but found it wasn't needed for my purposes. Your results may vary.

- George

[shavecat]

@george
didnt get it :
i saw
@mth75
install dirtcx no ?

[shavecat]

I have a file Winetricks.sh
but i dosent work just give my back to the emulation station :|
ideas ? :)

[George]

@shavecat It's most likely because it either needs to be run from the command line (for just commands) or from within an X-Windows environment (for a full GUI). My updated Wine script module installs Winetricks as well as a ports script which will show up in Ports and launch the Winetricks GUI within X-Windows.

[Folly]

@George

I installed your box86/wine multiple times on an updated fresh Raspberry pi OS with Desktop.

After the install everything works, but somehow the OS becomes slow and everytime HDMI audio breaks after a few days.

Could this have something to do with the box86/wine install ?

[George]

Hi @folly , thanks for letting me know. I've also experienced an audio issue after a few days, but haven't had the chance to experiment with it yet. I'll test out what happens when I reboot and then don't launch Wine and see if the audio issues persist after a few days.

As for the system slowing down, how are you seeing this? Is it from playing a game or something else?

From what I can tell, wine isn't running in the background, the graphics drivers are separate, and box86 is not running either. It could be something with binfmt, since that will intercept what you're trying to execute and then send it to the appropriate place, but that is a standard package anyone can install themselves. Maybe it's Timidity (for midi), which could also explain audio issues.

If I find anything out, I'll let you know.

- George