Magic Online

Revision as of 23:29, 10 October 2005; view current revision
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Game Info

Game version	2.0.001.554 (Current as of October 10 2005)
Installer	Multiple installers, none working in Cedega - see below
Game	Works, but has some issues described below
Patch	Uses an auto-patcher - seems to work on initial install, so "probably"
Download patch	-
Demo works	Yes
Download demo	Full Client (can be played in a limited mode for free without signing up for an account)
Requires no-cd patch	No
Multiplayer works	Yes
Works with Cedega version(s)	4.4.1, 4.3.2, 4.0.1, 4.0, 3.3.2
Tested with Cedega version(s)	4.4.1, 4.3.2, 4.0.1, 4.0, 3.3.2
Supported by TransGaming	No
URLs	Official Site

There are least two different versions of the installer, neither of which currently work with Cedega:
- The original CD version of the game dies before it even gets started, with either a 'can't find directory' or a 'can't initialize font' error. If there's a way around this, I haven't found it. If you want to use this version, you'll need to install it with Windows and copy it over.
- The downloadable client (from the 'Demo' URL above) will start up if run with -bigexe, but it will die with an unhandled exception shortly after starting. This version can be installed with the current version of Wine if one is patient - all of the buttons in the installer are blank, but it's not hard to figure out.
- Update: The current version (as of October 10 2005) of the downloadable client does not properly install as is in either Cedega or Wine. To get around this problem, unzip the large executable manually, changing the extension to .zip first if needed. Once this is done, the game can be installed by running the setup.exe file in the resulting directory with wine, as above.
- There is also a second CD version of the game, though it remains unknown if it differs from the other two versions of the installer, and if it will install properly with Cedega.

Once installed, the game will run, but will not display any text unless Cedega's use of Freetype is disabled. When using the command-line version of Cedega, this can be done by editing the ~/.transgaming/config file and changing the line that mentiones FreeType to read "FreeType" = "N".
When running from the command line, use the magic1.exe executable, and make sure to run the game from the directory where it is located. Running from a different directory will give you errors about CD files not being found.
To play this game with Point2Play, you'll need to make an icon for the game pointing to magic1.exe manually, and you must set the 'workdir' to the same dir as this file. Also make certain to disable the use of FreeType in the game's configuration. Note that this does NOT work with Point2Play 1.x - there is an option that should control the use of FreeType in the P2P 1.x config panel ("Use Improved Fonts") but even with this turned off, the text still does not show up.

The fonts that do get displayed in the game are rough and can be hard to read, especially at higher desktop resolutions.
The help buttons in the game fail to properly open a web browser. You can manually open the help files under the webhelp directory. Strangely enough, the "Card Shop" button in the game does properly open a web browser.