Installing Gehn under Linux with Wine

[Korovev]

As in my Mac tutorial on MO:ULa’s forums, I noticed that infos on how to run Gehn under Linux are a bit scattered, so I thought to write down the procedure I used to play Gehn.25 under (virtualized) Linux, using ‘pure’ Wine. Distributions often include outdated versions of Wine, so you might want to get the latest binaries from WineHQ.

Keep in mind however that if you want to play e.g. on Deep Island, you’ll likely need to downgrade Wine to 1.5.x, but then Gehn will stop working. Managing multiple versions of Wine is possible, but not terribly exciting I’d rather use a Wine manager to keep the shards separate and test different Wine versions individually.

If you have corrections or additions, post them here, so that more people can see them



The main problem I encountered was downloading MO:ULa’s datafiles, as under Wine I kept getting errors. So I ended up using the old fashioned method, i.e. installing MO:ULa first, then Gehn.

Code: Select all

GEHNPREFX=$HOME/gehnwine
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX winecfg

First I created a new prefix, so that if I mess up things the main prefix is unharmed, and to have a 32-bit environment. If you prefer to use the main prefix, you can skip that step and omit “WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX” in the following commands.

Now download both MO:ULa’s installer and Gehn’s installer, plus winetricks. Don’t forget to make the latter executable:

Code: Select all

chmod +x winetricks

Now install MO:ULa:

Code: Select all

WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX wine start /unix $HOME/MOULInstaller.exe

Once you get to the login screen, you can exit. Now you need winetricks:

Code: Select all

WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX $HOME/winetricks vcrun2015 d3dx10

With winecfg you can now set the compatibility to Windows 8 (though, even if it sound odd, I’m not sure this is really necessary):

Code: Select all

WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX winecfg

This has to be done now, as the vcrun2015 installer changes the compatibility to WinXP.

Now navigate to $HOME/gehnwine/drive_c/Program\ Files/ and rename the Uru Live folder “Gehn Shard”.
Running the Gehn installer now will give an alert about the Gehn Shard folder not being empty. It’s fine of course

Code: Select all

WINEPREFIX=$GEHNPREFX wine start /unix $HOME/gehn_shard.exe

The game will inevitably launch. Let it install PhysX; dxwebsetup will crash, but it’s already installed.
Hopefully, you should now be set. Use the following to launch the shard:

Code: Select all

WINEPREFIX=$HOME/gehnwine wine start /unix $HOME/gehnwine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Gehn\ Shard/UruLauncher.exe

Or set an alias in .bashrc:

Code: Select all

alias gehnshard="WINEPREFIX=$HOME/gehnwine wine start /unix $HOME/gehnwine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Gehn\ Shard/UruLauncher.exe"