Box86 and Wine on RPi4

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 . :\

ecto

@shavecat OK. I tested the game for some time (10mins) and it went really well. I haven't had a crash or anything. Of course it's still possible that the game might
crash later on...
I also have Diablo 2 running quite nicely. What did you do to install it? I'm using the QoL patches with the ddraw renderer. The glide renderer doesn't work for me.

ecto

New running games:

Sin Gold the latest GOG version runs out of the box with highest settings (even in 1920x1080, although a little slow and with a tiny HUD. So I prefer 1280x720)
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 GOG comes with the plus patch, which also renders in 800x600. The (opening) videos are glitched, but gameplay seems to be fast and fluent.

Where I have some problems is Alien vs. Predator Classic 2000 from GOG. The game runs out of the box, Fullscreen and very fluent, but after some time there are some texture errors: They glow in bright colors and the lighting gets bright and glitchy. I'd think this should be fixable, but I don't know how...

Good_Punk

I've installed Box86 and Wine from the RetroPieSetup but when I start Wine Desktop or the other shortcuts it will randomly crash (just goes back to EmulationStation) after 15-60 seconds.
I have it installed on a Pi 400, with a 1024x768 mini LCD.

Any ideas? Is there a log file I could look into? (Sorry, I'm really new to Linux and Wine 😅)

Also after installing Box86 I've got an error message that he was missing the LICENSE directory.
PS: Ok I've just added an empty LICENSE directory in the tmp folder and now it ran through without any errors.

Wine is still crashing though.

shavecat

@ecto
Wow love that
so i also wants diablo 2 to work
and with the hereos 3 can u tell me what your config is ? with the mod ?

Thanks alot ! <3

ecto

@good_punk said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

I've installed Box86 and Wine from the RetroPieSetup but when I start Wine Desktop or the other shortcuts it will randomly crash (just goes back to EmulationStation) after 15-60 seconds.
I have it installed on a Pi 400, with a 1024x768 mini LCD.

Any ideas? Is there a log file I could look into? (Sorry, I'm really new to Linux and Wine 😅)

Also after installing Box86 I've got an error message that he was missing the LICENSE directory.
PS: Ok I've just added an empty LICENSE directory in the tmp folder and now it ran through without any errors.

Wine is still crashing though.

You can always have a look at /dev/shm/runcommand.log, but in my experience, wine either starts or crashes before starting.
I don't know why, but sometimes I have to try 2-3 times until wine starts. Usually after that, it works right away...

hooperre

See Post Here For Updated List of Games I Have Running: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29241/the-which-games-works-with-box86-wine-topic-on-the-retropie-rpi4-400/89