Box86 and Wine on RPi4

shavecat

@george
That's really a shame to hear :\ , cause its working on my laptop (windows 10).
Thanks hope it will get a fix or so soon :)

ecto

I got some other great games to run:

Warblade is an Amiga Deluxe Galaga reimagination by the same developer (who sadly passed away). Although the game is just a Galaga clone, there is much do do and discover (secrets!!). I bought the game probably 15 years ago, so I don't know if the shop page still works, but it looks like it. The game works out of the box (you have to change some settings ingame, like fullscreen and D3D support). I have the feeling that that game runs a bit different (faster rate of fire), I have to confirm this on native Windows...
MDK which I had installed on Dosbox runs so much faster, it's a bit scary! (Of course since Dosbox has to work with software rendering.) I can't remember, but I think the GOG version works right out of the box.

Many hours went into The Sims (doesn't work because of some 16-bit code?) and The Sims 2 (Doesn't work because I can't (so far) get a NoCD Version, and I certainly won't connect a CDRom drive to the pi...

What I will try next is Ultima IX Ascention. It's supposed to work well in wine. Not that this is the height of Ultima gaming but me being a completionist...
Also I'm wondering about some "Old School Shooters" like Unreal, Kingpin (somewhat bad game that has a spot in my heart), Undying, XIII or Deus Ex.

Damn it! I need a 1Tb Card ;) EDIT Argh... too expensive ;)

Folly

@ecto said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

Damn it! I need a 1Tb Card ;) EDIT Argh... too expensive ;)

Just use an old fashioned hard-drive on your usb. :-)

shavecat

Hey ,
got a few more games working -
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Postal 1
Bip Blop balls of steel .

Maybe i can get help with -
Diablo 2 - its working but in the game so many glitches its not really playable.
And Heroes of might and magic 3 - but still always getting stuck after playing 10 min or so...
Thanks ! <3

George

@shavecat said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

Maybe i can get help with -
Diablo 2 - its working but in the game so many glitches its not really playable.
And Heroes of might and magic 3 - but still always getting stuck after playing 10 min or so...

Awesome work @shavecat!

Are you on the Box86 Discord? There have been several conversations about Diablo and Might and Magic. Many people there use boards like RK3399 vs. Raspberry Pi, but some of the techniques they use might apply. I did a search for Diablo 2, one of the users mentioned trying to play the game with the option -w. Also, someone posted this video (

), where it looks like a program is required to convert NGlide to OpenGL.

- George

shavecat

@george
thanks !
im using it with wine from ports retropie with sh file like this (/opt/retropie/ports/diablo2) -

#!/bin/bash
xset -dpms s off s noblank
cd "/media/usb0/roms/wine/diablo2/"
matchbox-window-manager &
WINEDEBUG=-all LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/retropie/supplementary/mesa/lib/" setarch linux32 -L /opt/retropie/ports/wine/bin/wine '/media/usb0/roms/wine/diablo2/Game.exe' -fullscreen

ExarKunIv

@shavecat i dont know if this will help or not. i have not played with Box86/Wine yet.

Pigamer has a decent step by step for diablo 2
https://thepigamer.blogspot.com/2021/03/case-study-diablo-ii-on-raspberry-pi.html

dodonpachi

I've attempted to get the following games running, and none of them worked with either .sh or .conf method:

Vanguard Princess (freeware, English patched)
Dodonpachi Resurrection (didn't expect this to run but I tried anyways lol)
Freedom Planet demo
Freedom Planet 2 demo
Rosenkreuzstilette
Street Fighter X Megaman (V2, official from Capcom)

The closest I've gotten is the white loading screen from Street Fighter x Megaman to load before closing, and the window for Rosenkreuzstilette to appear before closing. I must be doing something wrong, because I've seen a video of someone running at least Freedom Planet on Pi 4 using Box86 and Wine. Perhaps I need to install directX somehow?

UPDATE: Street Fighter X Megaman worked for a little bit. I simply loaded it again and I got into the title screen and Ryu's stage before it closed out automatically. It played kinda slowly and there was no sound. Better than nothing, I guess.

ecto

I've also hit a wall with my latest game installs...

Resident Evil 1-3 and Dino Crisis: There are REbirth patches for those games which allow for higher resolutions and much more, but so far I've not seen any in-game graphics :(
Ultima 9 I thought taht such an old game would put up no fight, but I was wrong... :( I can't get any glide wrapper to work, and D3D mode is glitched (text overlays). :(
The Sims 1 or 2 was already hard to get running on my PC without a CD, but on my Retropie they simply refuded to work. :(
Diablo 2 with QoL patches are working phantastically on my PC, but I get a lot of rendering errors on Retropie. Vanilla D2 with widescreen patch was working well before (ddraw mode), so I would think this has to work, too. But I can't get either of the 3 (!)modes suggested in the QoL patch to work. Has cost me many hours so far ^_^;
Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri: Game starts, I can hear sound but there is ony a black screen. ;_; None of the suggested fixes have worked so far...

So all in all I'm very frustrated right now. Lots of Time, and no further running games...

EDIT

Diablo 2 with QoL patches works. I had to start over, probably some setting was wrong. After that it (almost) worked out of the box. Almost, because I had to change the renderer from its default (DX11, which works great on real Windows 10) to DirectDraw. I also tried glide, which looks cooler (as it has some quasi 3D rendering and working cinematics) but is much slower and has a lot of rendering errors (everyhing is in rainbow-colors until I change the resolution). I wish I could get Gl4ES to work as it seems to work for others without those rendering errors.

ecto

New running games. Behold:

Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith: This one was hard. But the results are perfect. For the GOG version you need to install the unofficial patches. Next, JKgfxMod needs to be installed, but most of it's options have to be turned off (things like bloom, AA, etc) and the resolution (I'm running it at 1280x720) has to be set. In the wine startup-line, I had to insert the variable MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.0. With that I got the game and the mod running and most importantly the videos and menus are scaled to fit the screen. For CD music to work, a different version of winmm.dll is needed. To make it work I renamed the alternative winmm.dll to winmx.dll and modified JK.exe and some dlls to load winmx.dll(just load the files in an hexeditor and search for winmm.dll and rename that to winmx.dll). Additionally other mods and fixes can be installed to somewhat prettify the game. The same procedures are needed for Mysteries of the Sith (sigh).
Alpha Centauri suddenly worked, too. Idk. I used different unofficial patches and then installed the graphics patch PRACX for widescreen resoultions. No dll overrides/wrappers are needed. That one has cost me so much time. I don't know if I canged something else, but I don't think so.

ecto

Another small update with new games:

Deus Ex with Community Update Patch works, as the Unreal Engine renders with OpenGL. With all other renderers I had some problems. In 1280x720 the framerate is ok'isch. Lower would be better, but then I'm losing 16:9. Also, the game is very dark and I haven't found a way to increase gamma. Steam and GOG versions should both work, as the Update Patch is called by it's own executable without DRM.
Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 works nicely and looks nicely. I can remember that I had fun playing that game (so many years ago). It has an arcade feeling and an interesting mechanic where you can fight akimbo-style with different weapons in each hand. The game uses the Quake (3?) engine and also renders in OpenGL. 1280x720 is somewhat slow but probably playable. I only tried the first level.
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 with HD Patch works very well, when the correct renderer in the MOD settings is selected (plain ddraw without stretching, no gl, gdi or others). I might have the CNC ddraw wrapper installed. I don't remember. Problem was that the game crashed in the quick battle screen (where a small video with the outcome is displayed). With plain ddraw it works fine. Best here, too, is 1280x720 as the UI gets very small in full HD.

EDIT I just browsed though the thread again. There seems to be stability problems with HoMM3 (@shavecat ). I haven't played the game over any longer period than 1-2 mins because it crashed reproducible at the quick battle screen of the HD patch. This crash is resolved, but I don't know how stable to game is overall... Sorry.
I also deinstalled Deus Ex as the framerate together with the dark screen were just too much to be enjoyable.
Instead I will try to get Outcast to run. It was mentioned on the discord that it runs, so here is hoping for the best.

shavecat

@ecto said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Yes i agree
but i did play with it like 10 min' then it crush no matter what i try .
If u will have any news about it somehow will love to know ;)
I myself give up on it for now cause no matter what i did nothing help's.

great work by the way ;)

ecto

@shavecat Have you tried running it with the HD mod?

shavecat

@ecto
How ?

ecto

@shavecat Download this file and run it in Wine Explorer. I can't remember exactly, but you probably have to select the directory where HoMM3 is installed(*) and then you get a new executable (which is basically a launcher where you can select different options of the mod):

Make sure to select ddraw as "Color Mode" (at least none of the "stretchable" renderers) and select your resolution. You can also select "Create HD exe", which you can then use to start HoMM3 directly without the launcher.

I hope this helps. The game looks great with the HD mod, and I think you can deselect a lot of extras so the game feels more vanilla.
I'm usually patching the hell out of all my games, because I think that should I ever get around playing the games, I want to play them as comfortable as it gets! :)

(*) It's advisable to select your ~/RetroPie/roms/wine directory as a volume (like d:) with winecfg. This way it's easier to navigate to the games in wine.

shavecat

@ecto
file not find download :\

ecto

@shavecat huh. I can see... The page is gone... maybe it will come back later? But I guess the mod can be found elsewhere.

shavecat

@ecto
so i dont get it..
with this mod ? its working ?
i can play for hours ? :O

ecto

@shavecat Sorry, I don't know. It's at least another way to get it to work. I was able to start a quick match without crash and there ended my testing (less than 1 minute that I tried). But please post your results should or shouldn't it work.

shavecat

@ecto
still got stuck :\

Diablo 2 also not working right in my place too tons of glitch's . :\