One last game
Yes, there is one more game that I want to talk about a little bit more in detail, and I hope that you’re going to like it. The game only runs in 640×480, so using 720p display resolution is probably a good idea unless you want a tiny window on your screen. You need to run the game in window mode or set your display resolution to 640×480 for full-screen-mode. The game is installed from CD or an image mounted via cdemu. You will need the CD/Image whenever you play, but it doesn’t require a NoCD patch.
The game requires dsound as usual, but also needs some extra configuration. Go to the configuration screen of the virtual drive and click on “Display”, then change the Direct Draw Renderer from default to GDI. After that, one more step is needed, since the direct draw rendering library of the game needs to be replaced.
After you install the game, you need to download a fix from http://bit. ly/2r49kIv. Extract the ddraw.dll and wine3d.dll into the game folder, overwriting the ddraw.dll already inside the folder. This will allow you to play the game with music, video, and gameplay working, except for the menu. The menu will be missing some elements, but you should be able to get everything done anyway, like creating a new character, loading a game and so on. You may wonder what this game is, and Figures 22 and 23 will give you an answer to that!
If you never played Diablo before, now is your chance to replay some gaming history right on your ODROID. Find out why this game defined the hack-and-slash RPG genre.
Debugging and tips
On the main window of PlayOnLinux, you can start a game in debug mode by clicking on the Debug text on the left side, next to your game/program list. Or you can select “Tools -> PlayOnLinux debugger” from the menu, which will give some information about why a game did not start or is having issues. This doesn’t mean you will always be able to fix these issues, nor to identify them, but it’s a good place to start investigating.
Besides that, there is WineHQ, which is a forum about Windows games on Linux using Wine. If you want to find out why a certain game is not working under Wine, or what drivers you need to install, you should google “WineHQ ” (ex. “winehq diablo”), and you will get more detailed information about the game and how to configure it under Wine.
Known Issues, limitations and last thoughts
Apparently MIDI does not work inside the Exagear environment. It works outside of it, but inside Exagear, no process can access the MIDI device. Maybe that is something that can be fixed in the next release of ExaGear.
As I mentioned at the start of the article, OpenGL doesn’t work, and some games may require it but don’t use it heavily, so you may need to switch your Wine version to something different than “System”, since this version won’t even allow MESA Software GL to be used. Keep in mind that other Wine versions may be a lot slower.
Some games may not work even if they don’t use OpenGL but exhibit other issues. For example, the game Airline Tycoon Evolution runs perfectly fine but has one issue. The fonts do not work in 24 or 32-bit color and you need to switch to 16-bit, but that’s not supported, at least not on the ODROIDXU3/XU4. Although the game would normally work fine, you can’t play it because all of the text is invisible. 16-bit Windows games (Windows 95) might also not work, and they typically crash for me when I try to install them, so you might be further limited in your game choices.
I got a couple of other games to work such as Total Annihilation, but that game has a few issues with the sound. Sometimes it is necessary to turn sounds or music off in order to play some games. Generally, GoG games are the easiest to get to work. They are already DRM-Free and don’t require a NoCD patch, and are pre-optimized to run on modern Windows systems.
There aren’t many games that do not require 3D support. You have probably already seen a pattern in that adventure and strategy games are the most likely to work, and maybe some older RPG games from the Windows 98 era from around 1996-2001 as well.
Trying out games and failing can be a little frustrating, and ExaGear is not very fast with its I/O operations, which means that the access on disk is rather slow, so it takes a while to install, setup, and test your games. Be patient and you will find some really nice Windows games that will work on your ODROID. Hopefully, someday we can use 3D acceleration as well and will have even more games to play.
ExaGear is registered trademark of Eltechs, Inc. Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.
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