Cedega-4.1.1
From Unofficial TransGaming Wiki
Release Notes, November 9th, 2004.
Overview
TransGaming is pleased to announce the release of Cedega 4.1.1, dubbed Edam, giving TransGamers access to more Windows games in Linux, with greater ease. TransGamers can now download Cedega in RPM, Debian and TGZ formats from the downloads section of TransGaming's website: http://www.transgaming.com/
Cedega 4.1.1 is a bug fix release designed to enhance the game play experience of a number of games.
Enjoy!
New Features
Cedega 4.1.1
- Pixel Shaders should now work for a number of titles which were previously excluded such as Max Payne 2. As Pixel Shaders are disabled in the config file for Max Payne 2, users will have to manually change this option in order to enjoy the post processing effects.
- Medal of Honor Allied Assault is now playable again. It was previously broken by nVidia driver updates which exposed a game bug that can only handle an OpenGL extension string which is less than 1024 characters. This game bug is now worked around with the FixedGLExtensionBuffer option.
- Connecting to ubi.com, for Far Cry, should be more reliable. As well the version 1.3 patch will no longer crash.
- The font cache, introduced in Cedega 4.1, had a problem handing Dingbat and several other fonts. Users who had these TrueType fonts installed should see an improvement in Cedega's start up time.
- Other minor stability improvements.
System Requirements
Operating System
Core requirements are:
- Linux Kernel 2.2 or higher. Stock Kernels recommended over RedHat 7.x/8.x/9.x kernels. 2.6 kernels may have some scheduler issues.
- XFree86 4.0 or higher (4.2 and above recommended)
- glibc 2.2 or higher
- Working hardware accelerated OpenGL video card
CPU Type and Speed
Recommended minimum hardware is
- 500 MHz or faster Pentium or Athlon CPU
- 64MB of memory; 128 MB or higher recommended
- Several GB free hard disk space for games
- Linux-supported 3D graphics card with 16MB of video RAM is required. nVidia GeForce-class GPU recommended. ATI Radeon 8500 or higher with working ATI FireGL drivers should work for many (though not all) games, but will not perform as well for the moment.
Please note: individual requirements may be higher for certain games.
Fixed Function over Vertex Shaders
Fixed Function over Vertex Shaders (also called Fixed Programs) is an implementation of the Direct3D fixed function vertex processing pipeline using programmable vertex shaders. There are two main benefits of this technique. First, we can utilize the vertex data in the format as provided by Direct3D without the need to convert it into a format that is suitable for the OpenGL fixed function pipeline. This allows us to eliminate the copy and conversion overhead and store the vertex data directly in accelerated (AGP or video) memory. Second, this approach allows us the flexibility of implementing Direct3D functionality that is not available in, or has different semantics from, the OpenGL fixed function APIs.
Fixed Programs are currently auto-detected based upon the type of video card that your system is running. It is possible to override the auto-detection process with the use of the "FixedProgram" option in the [d3dgl] section of the config file (this option is unavailable in Point2Play at this time). Advanced users may wish to experiment with this option to determine the optimal setting for their system and games. In order to use Fixed Programs your graphics drivers must support the OpenGL ARB_vertex_program extension.
To enable Fixed Programs, place the line:
"FixedProgram" = "Yes"
in the [d3dgl] section of your config file.
To disable Fixed Programs, place the line:
"FixedProgram" = "No"
in the [d3dgl] section of your config file.
To have Fixed Programs auto-detected based on your graphics card, place the line:
"FixedProgram" = "Auto"
in the [d3dgl] section of your config file (this is the default setting).
Currently Fixed Programs are enabled by default on NVIDIA GeForce FX and later graphics cards, and disabled for earlier cards. Fixed Programs do not currently work on ATI cards due to driver issues. See below for the recommended settings for specific graphics cards.
GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4 MX, and GeForce4 Go series cards: While the drivers for these cards do support the ARB_vertex_program extension, these cards do not have hardware support for vertex programs and as such they are emulated in software by the driver, resulting in very poor performance. It is STRONGLY recommended that Fixed Programs be disabled for these cards.
GeForce3 and GeForce4 series cards: These cards do support hardware vertex programs, but high resource requirements for some games may prevent Fixed Programs from working correctly. However many games are fully functional and gain a significant performance boost by using Fixed Programs. It is recommended that you enable Fixed Programs on a game-by-game basis. If you experience missing or corrupt geometry in a specific title, you should disable Fixed Programs for this game.
GeForce FX and later cards: Fixed Programs can safely be enabled on these cards.
AGP Memory
Now that more vertex data is being stored in accelerated memory, it is especially important to ensure that your system is configured with enough AGP memory, and that Cedega is configured to use it appropriately. The amount of AGP memory available on your system is determined by the AGP Aperture Size setting in your system bios, as well as the amount of memory in your system.
It is recommended that you set your AGP Aperture Size to at least 128MB. The amount of AGP memory that is used by Cedega is controlled by the "AGPVertexRam" option in the [x11drv] section of the config file (in Point2Play this option is called "AGP Memory Available"). A good rule of thumb is to set this value to approximately one-half of the total available AGP memory. It is important that this number be smaller than the total AGP memory because the system
also uses AGP memory to transfer texture data. For example: if your AGP Aperture Size is 128MB you should configure Cedega to
use 64MB of AGP memory for vertex data.
The previous default value of 16MB for AGPVertexRam, has been increased to 32MB as of Cedega 4.1. Please note that after running Cedega 4.1 your config file will be modified and this setting will also apply to older versions of Cedega.
It is recommended that you check your bios settings and further increase this to value to 64MB or higher, depending on your system settings.
Pixel Shaders
Pixel Shaders are a DirectX 8 and higher feature that are used by many games for graphical effects. Cedega's Pixel Shaders are built on top of the OpenGL ARB_fragment_program extension. ARB_fragment_program is more powerful than Pixel Shaders versions 1.0-1.3, but is only supported on a higher class of graphics card. Thus, while Pixel Shaders are available on Windows systems starting with GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500, ARB_fragment_program is only available starting with GeForce FX and Radeon 9500 cards.
What this means is that a game which may have a minimum requirement of a GeForce 3 may actually be making the assumption that Pixel Shaders are available. In these siutations the game may not function correctly without them. For example, Battlefield Vietnam requires Pixel Shaders to play at higher detail levels. While a GeForce 3 is capable of playing the game on a Windows system, a GeForce FX is required to play the game under Linux, as only the FX series supports ARB_fragment_program on Linux.
Prelink and Exec-Shield
Prelink is a new set of functionality, available in newer glibc versions and distributions such as Fedora Core 1, designed to reduce the startup time for applications which use dynamic libraries. The loading speed improvements are achieved by reassigning the addresses of various dynamic linked libraries that will be placed in memory. Thus, relocations will not have to be performed by the dynamic loader when loading the application. Unfortunately, more often than not, libraries are prelinked into addresses which are incompatible with Windows programs.
Windows programs generally use a trick, similar to Prelink, to reduce the size of the executable and improve start times. This trick assumes, quite rightly for a Windows program, that the address 0x400000 is always available. Thus when Cedega attempts to load the Windows executable into the starting address, and it's not available, Cedega will fail to start the program with an error message mentioning "stripped relocation records" and "address 0x400000 not available".
Exec-shield is a kernel level solution (http://people.redhat.com/mingo/exec-shield/ANNOUNCE-exec-shield) which remaps executable code to a lower memory address with the intention of eliminating ASCII based code overflow attacks. The new location of the executable has the potential of conflicting with the required windows range which will result in the same error message as with Prelink.
The solution to the problems these two new technologies create is to disable them so that they don't affect any Cedega libraries or executable code.
To disable automatic prelinking in the future, edit /etc/sysconfig/prelink and set PRELINKING to no by making sure the following line is present:
PRELINKING=no
Then execute the cron job, most likely /etc/cron.daily/prelink, to reverse the Prelink for all of your libraries or manually run:
$ prelink -ua
To disable exec-shield you can either use the boot time option "exec-shield=0" or it may be changed, before running Cedega, by typing either:
$ echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
or
$ sysctl -w kernel.exec-shield=0
In addition, newer Fedora Core 2 (and likely Fedora Core 3) kernels also require support for the legacy VA layout to be enabled. This can be done via the command:
$ echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout
Legacy VA layout can also be enabled by default at boot by editing /etc/sysctl.conf and adding the following line:
vm.legacy_va_layout = 1
Information about this can be found on the fedora announce mailing list.
New CD Ejection system
In the past, games that came on multiple CD-ROMs posed a problem for Cedega users, since the Linux OS would 'lock' the CD-ROM tray in some cases, preventing users from ejecting a disk and inserting the next disk.
Cedega 4.0 includes a new feature that eliminates this problem in many cases. Simply press the eject button on your CD-ROM drive, wait a few seconds (ejecting may take as long as 10 seconds), and the disk will be automatically ejected. Insert your new disk, perform any mounting step required by your Linux distribution, and you should be able to simply continue your install.
Beginning with Cedega 4.0.1 automatic monitoring of CD-ROM drive eject buttons is off by default due to reported problems with some hardware such as compact flash readers and certain CD-ROM drive brands. It can be manually enabled by passing --monitor-cdrom-eject on the command line. When using Point2Play, the eject monitoring feature is by default enabled while running installers, and disabled at other times to prevent in-game performance problems. It may be forced on or off in Point2Play by going into Configure -> CDROM Eject Monitoring and setting Always ON or Always OFF
When the monitoring option is active, it should work on most recent model CD-RW and DVD drives. With older drives, or with the monitoring option disabled you can still force the ejection of an otherwise in-use disc by using the Point2Play 'Unmount' button, or by manually sending a SIGUSR2 signal to the wineserver process using a command such as:
$ killall -USR2 wineserver
In all other respects, using the Point2Play unmount feature should act the same as hitting the drive's eject button. If you have other Wine based software running, such as CodeWeavers CrossOver Office product, you may wish to avoid the use of the unmount button or the killall command mentioned above, as they will cause any non Cedega 4.0 based Wine process to halt.
Some installers may require you to re-insert the first CD-ROM to complete your install. Depending on the title, this may not yet work successfully.
Please contact TransGaming support if you have any issues relating to CD-ROM eject support, so that we can continue to improve this feature.
New Configuration Options
The following are a list of options which are new in Cedega 4.1.1. Under most circumstances you will not need to use these options; they are only provided for completeness and the inquisitive. All options can be overridden on a per executable basis.
[opengl] FixedGLExtensionBuffer. This option present a truncated list of OpenGL extensions to the application rather than the full list. This is useful in cases where the application cannot handle extremely long options. If you need to be able to offer specific options, rather than the fixed list that this offers, then you probably want to use the GLExtensionBuffer option.
[opengl] GLExtensionBuffer. This option is a comma-separate list of extensions prefixed with + or - that turns on or off the reporting of individual extension to the application. This gives the user complete control over what extensions are enabled/disabled so they can tweak/tune as necessary. Turning an option on here does not magically give the card the capability to do it. The options for the list follow the standard OpenGL naming convention (ie +GL_ARB_imaging,-GL_ARB_depth_texture). You should only need to use this option in very extreme cases.
Known Issues and Comments
Pthread Stack Size
If available, Cedega attempts to make use of pthreads (POSIX threads), instead of LinuxThreads. Some distros which use pthreads only support a maximum stack size of 2MB. This can cause problems with some games which require larger stack sizes. Common symptoms of such problems include (but are not limited to) a crash to desktop when starting a game or when loading or saving a level. If this happens, you can work around it by starting Cedega with pthreads disabled.
To disable pthreads when running from the commandline run with the '-use-pthreads no' option. If using Point2Play, you can disable pthreads on the per-game configuration as necessary, or for all games by adding the following line to the [transgaming] section of the .point2playrc file.
pthreads_forced=off
Games with known problems on 2MB stacks include (but are not limited to):
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
- Command & Conquer: Generals
- DOOM 3
- Battlefield Vietnam (multiplayer)
- StarWars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
ATI FireGL drivers
TransGaming has seen some game-stopping instability with ATI cards using FireGL and/or DRI running Cedega. Games of note with issues are Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, Need for Speed Underground and Sacrifice. Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam have this issue, but there is a known work-around listed in their sections below.
The games Hitman Contracts, Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam exhibit graphical corruption caused by a known issue in ARB_vertex_program.
TransGaming is continuing to improve support and we welcome all reports and your votes in the polls.
ATI cards and VBO
The graphical acceleration included in Cedega 4.1 is of an experimental nature. While it should work for most games, there are still a number of titles which seem to exhibit problems, both in terms of graphical corruption and performance. For these titles you can simply disable the VBO option.
HTML display of license agreements in on-line games
Cedega 4.1 may not support the display of HTML content in some on-line games. As a result, any license agreements displayed by these games may not be readable while running with Cedega.TransGaming Technologies Inc. will not be held liable for any failure or breach on your part of any 3rd party license agreement.
You are solely responsible for ensuring that you have read and will abide by any third party license agreements, regardless of the ability of the cedega software to display such license agreements on a linux system.
American McGee's Alice
- Some users may experience loud distorted sounds while playing Alice. Go into the in-game sound options and remove the check mark from Force 8 Bit sounds.
Anarchy Online
- This game must be manually patched to 14.7.3 (as in windows) before running the auto patching utility.
- The auto patching utility may stop working or crash. Simply close and restart the patcher to continue.
Baldur's Gate 2
- The "Software Mirror BLT" option under the "2D 16 bit Color Depth" MUST be selected when running in 2D mode.
- The three concentric boxes may not appear during the video test.
- During the opening scene in the dungeon, occasionally the game will not advance after the sewer gollum has talked. Simply restart.
Battlefield 1942
- The game must be patched to at least version 1.3 in order to fix problems that will prevent it from starting the game engine properly.
- The [d3dgl] 'ClipSpaceFix' option no longer needs to be disabled. This has been left off by default in the config file for backwards compatibility.
- Use of 24-bit color is recommended if shadow effects are enabled.
- The animated background of the main menu does not work.
- Using Punkbuster enabled servers may cause problems.
- With AIC on 2.6 kernels the intro movies can suffer from stutter.
- ATI users should add '+restart 1' to their command line to skip the intro movies, thus avoiding an X error in the ATI FireGL drivers
- ATI users should be sure to disable VBO for this title
Battlefield Vietnam
- The game requires the availability of pixel shaders. If you do not have a card which supports ARB_fragment_program in OpenGL, you will have graphics problems if you set the "Graphics Quality" option higher than "Low". A GeForce FX series card is recommended for this game.
- The animated background of the main menu does not work.
- Using Punkbuster enabled servers may cause problems.
- With AIC on 2.6 kernels the intro movies can suffer from stutter.
- This title will crash on exit.
- ATI users should add '+restart 1' to their command line to skip the intro movies, thus avoiding an X error in the ATI FireGL drivers
- ATI users should be sure to disable VBO for this title
- ATI users may have performance issues with this title
Bink Movies
- A number of titles use Bink to play their movies and cut scenes. In some cases, when AIC is enabled, movie display may be choppy due to Linux scheduler limitations. To work around this, turn Accelerated Interprocess Communication off or skip the movies. TransGaming expects to have a workaround for this in future releases.
Black & White
- Playing in low texture mode will lead to crashing. You may not be able to get back to the configuration screen to return to normal detail.
Call of Duty
- The installer for this game will fail when trying to switch back to the first CD-ROM from the second CD-ROM. To work around this problem select cancel when it asks for the second CD-ROM and say NO to the question concerning reversing the changes. Once stopped, insert and mount the second cd and copy the files in Setup/Data/Main to the main directory inside the installed Call of Duty. Additionally some registry entries will not be automatically added. If you wish to play multiplayer, you will need to add the following to your system.reg file in order to be able to upgrade your version:
[SOFTWARE\\Activision\\Call of Duty] "InstallDrive"="D:" "InstallPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Call Of Duty" "Language"="1" "Version"="1.1"
- The game may hang upon quitting.
City of Heroes
- To receive a proper cursor in City of Heroes you must have XFree 4.3 installed and run in win2k mode (default), and use 24-bit color. With versions of X prior to 4.3 a large black box will surround the cursor.
- HTML does not render thus the EULA is not visible. See the specific section about HTML above.
- Pop up dialogue boxes in the installer appear behind the main window. It is recommended that you install in desktop mode.
- The installer may crash at the end. It should not affect game play.
- nVidia users may find that the patcher crashes when finished. Simply try to enter the game again.
Civilization III
- There are several sound problems with this application.
- Earlier patch levels will not pass copyprotection. v1.29f is recommended.
- The game will crash if sound is being used by another device.
Command and Conquer: Generals
- Game play may be slow in 16 bit, 24 bit is recommended.
Counter Strike: Condition Zero
- Pushing the tab key may crash the game in single player mode.
Doom 3
- A linux client exists for this game. Please support the ID Linux client!
- Installing with
winver win2kmay not work. Ignore the warning about installing with win98 if you are using the default setup. - The game may crash, or hang, on exit.
- ATI users may experience graphical corruption in game. Changing the ingame render path may help. To do so ctrl-alt-~ brings up the console and then type gfxinfo and verify that you are not using the ARB2 path. If you are change to one of the other support paths using, for example,
r_render R200.
Dungeon Siege
- The sound in the installer may be incorrect.
- On non-NPTL systems, DS will lock up as soon as you move the mouse when using nVidia 4496 and later drivers. Downgrading drivers is the only reliable way to solve this problem.
- More recent drivers have fixed this problem on NPTL systems.
- Even with older nVidia drivers, this game may not work on some systems.
- Some setups may experience deadlocks before the main menu. Running with any debug channels on generally works as a remedy.
- The water does not flow in the game.
- Multiplayer support is not yet available due to the use of DirectPlay 8 in the game.
Far Cry
- The US DVD installer does not work. The UK DVD can be installed using the Loki installer at http://www.liflg.org/.
- Movies play with incorrect aspect ratio, and do not cover the full screen.
- Attempting to skip the intro movies may cause a crash.
- Main menu background movie is slow, we suggest disabling it in options.
- When Pixel Shaders are disabled, only the low detail level is supported.
- When Pixel Shaders are enabled, all detail settings are supported, except for "Special Effects Quality" which must be set to "Low". In patch v1.3, due to changes in the game's engine, only the low detail level is supported.
- Having the "Texture Quality" set to "Medium" may cause a crash on startup on some machines. Any other value for this setting should work.
- Fog may not be supported in certain detail settings (e.g. underwater fog, with pixel shaders enabled on low detail).
- Users may experience a significant frame rate drop whenever a helicopter is on screen.
- v1.1 patch is unsupported, due to installer issues, however the v1.3 does install.
- When using the FarCryConfigurator with Cedega on the command line, make sure to run it with the --use-dos-cwd option pointing at your main Far Cry directory; otherwise, your config file will be created in the current directory and you'll need to copy it to your main Far Cry directory.
- This title may not start consistently with the v1.3 patch. If Far Cry crashes in the middle of copy protection leaving processes running, don't despair! Try running Far Cry again, and then either typing killall -9 wine wineserver or selecting Stop Running Games from within Point2Play.
- Multiplayer hosting does not work.
- Does not work on ATI cards.
Grand Theft Auto 3
- The opening videos for Grand Theft Auto 3 work quite slowly under Cedega. The movies may be skipped by pressing the space bar twice.
- Users playing this game with a 2.6 kernel may notice significant pauses while playing this game. Disable the Accelerated Interprocess Communication to reduce the number of pauses received. Downgrade to a 2.4 kernel to remove the issue.
- This title is not working with ATI video cards.
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
- Occasionally textures may display incorrectly.
- The opening videos for Grand Theft Auto Vice City work quite slowly under Cedega. The movies may be skipped by pressing the space bar twice.
- Users playing this game with a 2.6 kernel may notice significant pauses while playing this game. Disable the Accelerated Interprocess Communication to reduce the number of pauses received. Downgrade to a 2.4 kernel to remove the issue.
- This title is not working with ATI video cards.
Hitman: Contracts
- Using alt-tab in game will cause a crash.
- The movies do not resize correctly. As a concequence the game will not start if in 640x480 mode and cut scenes may leave artifacts around the edge.
- ATI users may experience graphical corruption.
Homeworld 2
- The game may not work unless patched to at least version 1.1.
- Multiplayer support is not yet available due to the use of DirectPlay 8 in the game.
- This game may not work with the 3.11.1 fglrx drivers for ATI.
Max Payne 2
- Pixel Shaders are disabled by default in the config file to ensure backwards compatibility with previous Cedega and WineX releases. They can be turned on as of Cedega 4.1.1 without causing crashing.
- Users may experience problems with this title on ATI cards.
Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault
- A defect in the game software, which should be fixed in the latest Spearhead expansion patch, causes the game to crash under Cedega. The Cedega team has provided a workaround. Both Point2Play and the cedega start script are set up so that this game will work out of the box.
Morrowind: Elder Scrolls III
- The intro videos can freeze if they fall behind the play frame rate due to a coding problem with the application.
- The game will crash if sound is being used by another device.
- ATI users should note that, as of this writing, pixel shader water only works with the 3.9.0 drivers.
Need For Speed: Underground
- The installer presently does not work due to its use of flash. You can work around this by killing the EReg.exe process when the installation appears to hang. Additionally you need to use the --use-dos-cwd option pointing to your CD-ROM drive.
- The installer progress bar does not update.
- Copyprotection for this title does not presently work.
- The auto patcher for earlier versions of this title will not work and you will have to manually download and patch.
- To play multiplayer online, you will need to manually register the game on EA's website.
- Pixel Shaders are not supported in this game due to assumptions on the availablility of non power of two textures. They are disabled by default.
- Car reflection update rate needs to be set to the lowest setting to play this title. Raising this value will cause the game to crash.
- Vanishing textures may be fixed by disabling car headlights in the display options panel.
SimCity 4
- To install the game, you must insert and mount the CD-ROM, and use the following command line:
$ cedega -use-dos-cwd f:/ -- f:/autorun.exe In Point2Play use the Run Directory check box.
- If the installer asks you to install a new version of DCOM, say "no".
- The game has small graphical glitches when scrolling with the hardware renderer. Use of the software renderer is recommended and is automatic as of WineX 3.2.
- Use of the "?" to get information can cause graphical corruption. Scrolling the window will clear this up.
- Game requires that the shared memory wineserver be disabled. Set
"SHMWineserver" = "N"in the config file, or ensure that Accelerated Interprocess Communication is disabled when using Point2Play.
Star Wars: Galaxies
- HTML does not render thus the EULA is not visible. See the specific section about HTML above.
- Desktop icons created for launching may not be correct if using the command line.
- Scrolling to the edge of the screen does not cause the view to rotate.
- The Jump To Lightspeed expansion pack is not supported at this time.
Star Wars: Jedi Academy
- This game may need to be patched to the latest version for it to start correctly.
- This game may hang when loading a level on ATI cards.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- The game will crash on exit.
- The online patcher does not fully work. Follow the patcher instructions for downloading the manual patch.
- Unless upgraded to at least 1.03 you may experience double cursors.
- The game may not go fullscreen automatically unless upgraded to 1.03.
- The mouse will not be usable unless you disable "Hardware Mouse" from the launcher configure screen.
Steam
- Window manager decorations are visible in several managers when they should not be.
- Steam may crash at 27% for non pthread nvidia users when trying to update. Just install with '-use-pthreads on' to bypass the problem. Reinstalling may also resolve the situation.
- Steam may crash after login on some systems if there are too many .gcf files downloaded in the steam directory. If this happens simply move aside some of the gcf files that you aren't currently using.
Warcraft III The Frozen Throne
- The desktop icon (shortcut) for Warcraft III will not function correctly if installed with WineX 3.1, or earlier, due to the way the previous WineX versions changed the command line. Either edit the shortcut to start "Warcraft III.exe", rather than "War3.exe", add the
-classicparameter, or reinstall both Warcraft III and Frozen Throne.
World of WarCraft
- The World of WarCraft installer is not currently supported in Cedega.
- The beta version of this game has been tested and is fully working up to the 10/11/04 patch. As this title is still in beta, future changes may break Cedega compatibility.
- With the introduction of the latest patch some users may experience a dissappearing cursor.
Let the Games Begin
This document is Copyright© 2002-2004, TransGaming Technologies Inc. Redistribution is permitted for non-commercial use only.
