Tutorial: How to run UltraStar Deluxe with wine

[linnex]

Hi everybody,

as most of you already know, there is work going on to port US dx to linux. But, as there is currently only the windows version available, I thought: why not trying to run it under linux with wine. And, after some tedious "what error is that now and how do I solve it" problems with wine, I finally managed to run the windows version of Ultrastar DX (1.0) under linux.

Requirements

• I assume that you have some basic knowledge about linux, but don't worry, I'm not expecting too much.
• Your PC might need more CPU power to run UltraStar dx than it does under windows. Wine is a kind of translatior, translating, the Windows Api to linux calls.
• As UltraStar DX makes use of OpenGL for those nice animations, you need 3d-acceleration under linux. Otherwise US dx runs very slowly. NVIDIA and ATI both provide binary drivers for their most recent graphic cards under linux (x86 and x86_64). Please read the manuals of your distro. They should explain how to install those drivers.

Step One: Wine

First of all, you need a recent version of wine. "Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix." http://www.winehq.org. The version I used is 0.9.46. Virtually all decent distro's should have wine in their tree.
e.g. under gentoo the command is:

Code: Select all

emerge wine

Wine nowadays comes with a nice little configuration program "winecfg" which circumvents nasty editing of config files. If you have just installed wine now, you possibly need to setup your audio driver, as shown in the following image:

WineCfg.png

Step Two: UltraStar Deluxe

Unfortunately, the current version of US dx (1.0) which can be downloaded from [url]sourceforge.org[/url] cannot be used with wine directly. There is a minor bug in the initialization process, which has been already corrected in the SVN version. This bug does not pose a problem under windows, but under wine, the program won't start. You download and compile the UltraStar Deluxe Version from the SVN, or wait until a new version is out. I am not sure whether I may upload the patched "exe"-File here. I will have to ask the maintainers first.

Step Three: Libraries

UltraStar Deluxe uses several Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) under Windows. Wine can usually use these libraries, too. However, problems occur with older versions of the SDL.dll. The version of the SDL.dll that comes with the current UltraStar dx package is incompatible with wine and does not work. You need to download the most recent version of this file from http://www.libsdl.org/. The version I used can be found at http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.12-win32.zip. Extract the SDL.dll file directly to your "UltraStar Deluxe" folder.

Step Four: Launch

Right now, you should be able to launch UltraStar Deluxe. Really, that's all you have to do. The bash command for launching it is:

Code: Select all

cd "Your-US_dx-Folder"
wine UltraStar.exe


After a while, wine should start like this:

USdx_wine1.png

Or in fullscreen mode depending on your config.ini settings.

Known Problems

I really don't know why, but wine seems to have problems with some of the fonts that are included in UltraStar Deluxe. Those fonts are selected in the Theme files of the Program. When I tested the program, Font Style 1 and Font Style 3 could not be displayed. I also experienced some minor texture problems at the bars (see image).

USdx_wine3_worked.png

The font problem can be solved easily by replacing all "Font = 1" with "Font = 0" in your favorite theme file ("UltraStar-DX-Folder/Themes/XXX.ini").


Well, that's all for now. I hope that you will also be able to run US-dx under wine now.

Greets Linne

[dutch2005]

thnank you for this good walktrough, keep up the good work

[mog]

Awesome Linnex, thanks for all the work and effort that you've put into that nice tutorial. Hope you don't mind that I've put this tutorial as a news item on our SourceForge site =)

Greetings, bet you made some Linux users very happy

PS: Jay implemented the source change that you suggested in the trunk code, so the next release will feature it.

[linnex]

Hi everybody,
its me again. I've been busy for a while as I just started to work which quite time consuming - much more than the studies where Nevertheless I am still interested in US DX and I have tried 1.0.1a now on my linux box which worked instantly. Great! Even the videos are running now!! Cool!

There is something I would like to add to this tutorial though. I tried to use an external usb audio adapter and it didn't work at first so I needed to tweak wine a little. USB Audio devices usually use a unified driver under linux (snd-usb-audio in the kernel, usb-audio in alsa-drivers) which is good on the one hand, as they work immediately. On the other hand the functionality might be limited due to the generic driver model. In my case the sound card only excepted a few playing and recording formats which were incompatible to the one Ultrastar requires.
If you experience problems (crashes of USDX mostly which you don't have with other sound cards under linux) you might want to try the following. It might also happen with other sound cards under linux. But don't worry, there is a solution:

You can tweak wine by using the wine "regedit" and disabling the automatic detection of sound cards and specify them yourself. See http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys how this is done. You may also need to create an ".asoundrc" file in you home directory and use alsa plugins (esp. dsnoop) and converters to create a UltraStar compatible device. (See for example at http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc for more information about the .asoundrc file).

In "regedit" you just need to add the described "Alsa Driver" key (it usually does not exist) and specify you cards or better the virtual pcm devices you created by adding a number of "DevicePCMn" = "my_vitual_device_n" strings, where "my_virtual_device" is the name of the device you have created in the ".asoundrc" file, n is the number of the virtual device you would like to assign (from 1 to DeviceCount).

Hope that now there will be even more linux - USDX users

Grüße aus Mainz

der Linne

[mog]

Thanks for the additional content Linnex, together with that just wanted to announce that I copy and pasted the whole tutorial to the USDX Wiki. I just hope that someone finds the time to update it, I just fear it get's lost here

Greetings _o/