Easy Guide For Running Project 1999 On Linux

[Rickson]

Hello All,

First of all, this is not meant to replace the other great guides out there for getting Project 1999 to run on Linux. I just wanted to post an alternative way that works and that I found to be easy and intuitive. The other guides work, but this was quick for me, and I hope it works for others. Also, I am writing it because people were having trouble with PlayOnLinux and Project 1999, but it works perfectly.

The other Project 1999 guides for Linux are from cadiz here (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21734) and from mgellan here (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14125). The guide that helped me come up with this one is what I use when I play on TAKP, and you can find it on their wiki. I do not want to link directly over to that since this is in the regular forums and there is a modification to make it work with Project 1999. Still, you can find it if you Google takproject and go to their wiki, and the guy who wrote it is much more knowledgeable than me with Linux.

Also, I am using Ubuntu 14.04, and this is untested with other versions of Linux, but I think it would work the same. I am not a Linux guru, which is why I think this is helpful to newer users of Linux.

Here we go:

1. Install Wine - You can do it through the Ubuntu Software Center or the terminal and more information is on their site here (https://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu) or on the guides above.

2. Install PlayOnLinux - You can do it through the Ubuntu Software Center or follow the instructions here (https://www.playonlinux.com/en/download.html) for other versions of Linux. I used the terminal for the Ubuntu Trusty version install personally.

3. Open PlayOnLinux > Tools > Manage Wine Versions > Install 1.7.50 (x86) - (Newer versions may work as well, but again, this is what worked for me. Also, an older version did not work, so make sure to get 1.7.50.)

4. In PlayOnLinux click Configure > New > Next > 32 bit windows installation > Select the version of wine you installed 1.7.50 or newer > Name it Project1999 or something like that (will refer to it as Project1999 moving forward).

5. Highlight Project1999 in the left menu > Install Components > Install D3Dx9, Dinput 8, and vcrun2010.

6. You have to replace a particular .dll file for dinput 8 after this, and you can get it here (http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?dinput8) and then add it to your system32 folder in your new instance of wine. You should be able to get to this file by navigating to ~/PlayOnLinux's virtual drives/Project1999/drive_c/windows/system32/ and then just replacing the file in the destination with the newly downloaded one.

7. Back in the PlayOnLinux Configuration > Make New Shortcut > eqgame.exe > Next > Name it Project1999 > Select that you do not want to make another shortcut and hit next

8. In Configure > Wine > Configure Wine > Graphics tab > select the 1st box, deselect the 2nd box, and then select the 3rd and 4th boxes. Set your desktop size to what you want, mine is 1500 x 800 to give me a windowed view with a little extra space on the sides. (Of the 4 boxes, the one that is NOT checked is the "Allow the window manager to decorate the windows, and the others are checked.)

9. Close out of the PlayOnLinux program and go to your desktop where you should have your new shortcut > Right click on it and hit properties > In the command box, add the word "patchme" without quotations at the end of the line. > Here is what mine looks like --> /usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "Project1999" %F patchme

10. Launch the game from your desktop shortcut and it should work for you.

11. You may have to make a few modifications to your eqclient.ini file depending on what you have, and if anyone runs into issues, let me know and I will paste my eqclient.ini here.

Let me know if this works for you!

[Tarigin]

Nice read and guide. YOu totally missed the part tho where to put the EQ folder.

[Tarigin]

~/PlayOnLinux's virtual drives/Project1999/drive_c/Program Files

Thats where i put my EQ Folder. Getting to char select but then the game crashes when trying to enter world.

[Tarigin]

Nevermind... Musta been a onetime Crash. Working really nice. thanks for the tutorial

[Boolean]

I followed this tutorial (I'm on Ubuntu 14.04, using Wine 1.7.50) and when I launch the desktop shortcut I get "Wine has encountered a serious error" and then I have to kill the process from the system monitor. Any ideas?

[Wisteso]

Run it using a terminal, copy/pate output to forum using a pastebin link

[krakmojo]

And or can we get a Screenshot?
It sounds like its not even starting the EQw.exe in WINE.

Check to make sure you are running a 32bit instance of wine by Going to Configure and check the wine version. You might have to hit the "+" button to get the full listing and or to install a diff version to test.

Also, I'm the dude who wrote the TAKP wiki thing, so if you have comments or suggestions I welcome them via PM.

[Feanol]

I'm sure there's a simple solution to this, but I've found that running the EQ executable from any kind of shortcut or terminal prompt results in the error Boolean described.

My fix for this that has always worked is to target the executable directly from the folder where EQ is installed in the dosdevices/C:/ProgramFiles/Sony area. When run from inside the folder with all the gamefiles EQ seems to work fine.

Also, consider using Q4Wine (http://sourceforge.net/projects/q4wine/) if PlayonLinux is giving hassle. It's my go-to Wine GUI for running Windows executables.

Ubuntu 12.04 here, I know i'm way behind the times but it's so stable for everything I use it for I don't wanna mess with it =p

[krakmojo]

Yeah, scratch the EQW part, mind was on the other server.

The way I do the "patchme" for the shortcut is I go to PlayOnLinux Config, select the shortcut I made under the Wine instance, and just put "patchme" without quotes in the Arguments field.

One other quick tip for Gnome users, "sudo cp ~/Desktop/*.desktop /usr/share/applications/" makes the Wine launchers available for use in the Gnome launcher without needing to go to PlayOn

[Wisteso]

I should comment, I've always used normal Wine for running EQ. Never needed the extras that PlayOnLinux provided.

[Boolean]

Run it using a terminal, copy/pate output to forum using a pastebin link

This was my output:


usr@computer:$ wine eqgame.exe patchme
fixme:toolhelp:CreateToolhelp32Snapshot Unimplemented: heap list snapshot
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x33ebd8,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:d3d:wined3d_check_device_format_conversion wined3d 0x140e20, adapter_idx 0, device_type WINED3D_DEVICE_TYPE_HAL, src_format WINED3DFMT_B8G8R8X8_UNORM, dst_format WINED3DFMT_B8G8R8X8_UNORM stub!
fixme:d3d:wined3d_check_device_format_conversion wined3d 0x140e20, adapter_idx 0, device_type WINED3D_DEVICE_TYPE_HAL, src_format WINED3DFMT_B5G6R5_UNORM, dst_format WINED3DFMT_B5G6R5_UNORM stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x33eed8,0x00000000), stub!
err:x11settings:X11DRV_ChangeDisplaySettingsEx No matching mode found 1280x720x32 @0! (XRandR 1.2)
err:x11settings:X11DRV_ChangeDisplaySettingsEx No matching mode found 1280x720x32 @0! (XRandR 1.2)
err:x11settings:X11DRV_ChangeDisplaySettingsEx No matching mode found 1280x720x32 @0! (XRandR 1.2)
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0xfffffffc at address 0xf1f0ce (thread 0009), starting debugger...
err:module:import_dll Library dbghelp.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\windows\\system32\\winedbg.exe") not found
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"C:\\windows\\system32\\winedbg.exe" failed, status c0000135


And or can we get a Screenshot?
It sounds like its not even starting the EQw.exe in WINE.

Check to make sure you are running a 32bit instance of wine by Going to Configure and check the wine version. You might have to hit the "+" button to get the full listing and or to install a diff version to test.

Also, I'm the dude who wrote the TAKP wiki thing, so if you have comments or suggestions I welcome them via PM.

Hi, what is the TAKP wiki? I haven't seen that yet... Also, I have attached a screenshot of my terminal output (same as I have in the quote above) and my wine version (which appears to be 32 bit as well).

I'm sure there's a simple solution to this, but I've found that running the EQ executable from any kind of shortcut or terminal prompt results in the error Boolean described.

My fix for this that has always worked is to target the executable directly from the folder where EQ is installed in the dosdevices/C:/ProgramFiles/Sony area. When run from inside the folder with all the gamefiles EQ seems to work fine.

Also, consider using Q4Wine (http://sourceforge.net/projects/q4wine/) if PlayonLinux is giving hassle. It's my go-to Wine GUI for running Windows executables.

Ubuntu 12.04 here, I know i'm way behind the times but it's so stable for everything I use it for I don't wanna mess with it =p

I've tried the direct execution method but that causes the same error. I don't know if PlayOnLinux is causing the error but I'm not suspecting it. I've used it for SC2 and it works fine.

[krakmojo]

I'm working to re-create the error, might take me till tomorrow to really have time to sit down and work on it though. I will check in as soon as I get something.

[krakmojo]

I was running into different errors, but I think the following got mine to work.
In the EQClient.ini I set the following.

VertexShaders=FALSE
VideoMode=4 and
WindowedModeXOffset=0
WindowedModeYOffset=0
WindowedMode=TRUE


The other things I can think of is to check your drivers and use Non-Free (Still free but not open source)
and or maybe go to Configuration==>Display and maybe hard code it for OpenGL?

[Boolean]

Thanks krakmojo, the changes to the ini file appears to have worked. I'll post again here if I notice anything out of the ordinary while playing.

[krakmojo]

Good times.

I'm personally getting told that my Spells file is outdated, yet I am running the latest version that I can download, and I've checked that my files names match my PC version (Linux being case-sensitive), so if I find anything interesting there, I will post here.

[krakmojo]

Appears my problem was that DSETUP.dll did not properly replace dsetup.dll due to Linux case-sensitivity.
After I renamed my DSETUP.dll to dsetup.dll my client ran properly.

[Rickson]

Thank you everyone for the feedback, and thank you, krakmojo, for the original tutorial on Takp. I re-installed titanium from the discs and went through the steps again. At the time I wrote the OP, I used an already installed folder from my external hard drive and did not need a fresh install. I first setup the playonlinux configuration for steps 1 - 5, but I skipped step 6 with the manual downloading and updating of the dinput 8 file this time. I then installed the discs using the run a .exe from the playonlinux settings and went through the rest of this guide. It worked fine for me with the configuration being wine 1.7.52, but then I got the issues with the DSETUP.dll, so thanks again krakmojo! I ended up with a caps version and lower case in the folder, so I just removed the caps version.

I am currently testing WinEQ2 installed in the same bottle with eq and running the shortcut to that before running eq. I am having success so far, and I will post an update when I know if it continues to work well.

Is anyone else still having trouble?

[Menemas]

Your guide worked perfectly on the first attempt! Thank you very much. I've been struggling on and off for a few years trying different methods. Very happy to find success. GOODBYE WINDOWS! YOU SUCK!

[mgellan]

I should comment, I've always used normal Wine for running EQ. Never needed the extras that PlayOnLinux provided.

Yeah basically I copy my EQ folder into $HOME/.winep99/drive_c, put the following into a file name runeq.sh and chmod 700 runeq.sh so it's executable:

export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.winep99/
cd $HOME/.winep99/drive_c/P99
taskset -c 0 wine eqgame.exe patchme 2>/dev/null

You do need to run the Nvidia drivers for their cards and make the changes to eqclient.ini to turn stuff off as above, or your toons don't show up.

Currently running on Ubuntu 14.04 with Wine 1.6.2.

Regards,
Mg

[Feanol]

Appears my problem was that DSETUP.dll did not properly replace dsetup.dll due to Linux case-sensitivity.
After I renamed my DSETUP.dll to dsetup.dll my client ran properly.

Classic Linux...

Glad you got it working pal! Open Source Master Race!

[Rickson]

Your guide worked perfectly on the first attempt! Thank you very much. I've been struggling on and off for a few years trying different methods. Very happy to find success. GOODBYE WINDOWS! YOU SUCK!

I am glad to here you got it working!

Side note: I mentioned above that I was testing Lavishsofts WinEQ2 linked in the getting started guide. - http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2651

It works great. After taking the steps in the guide, I downloaded WinEQ2 from the getting started guide and then ran it as an exe in the same configuration where I have Project 1999 in PlayOnLinux. I installed it into the drive_c beside the EQ folder. I then used PlayOnLinux to create a shortcut, and now I just run the WinEQ2 and it opens up my virtual desktop and then I right-click on it and run EQ and it automatically does the patchme and runs P99.

I only did this because I was running into issues where my laptop was getting too hot when I played with it plugged in (it's an old machine) and WinEQ2 allows me to control the CPU usage that EQ needs with the built-in EQPlayNice. If anyone tries this and has questions on it, let me know and I can write it out in a more detailed manner.

[Vormotus]

Sorry for this being a of a necro, but this was the only guide that helped me fully install Linux on Lubuntu. My question is if any one knows why the dinput8.dll needs to be replaced?

That link leads to several versions, so I grabbed one randomly and though I could login I could not get slashes (////) on my keyboard, had to delete everything and reinstall

After that though I could log in no problem, and no slash keyboard issues I got a weird issue with mouselook locking me up in a weird tunnel vission which kinda gets fixed on fullscreen but then my mouse look borks up and I get doing ultra turbon spins haha.

Just wondering if that dinput8.dll is the culprit? there are so many of them.

Stil an awesome installation guide, much better than the others, worked almost flawlessly on Lubuntu 17.10.

[Vormotus]

Small Update, after trying several of the dinput8.dlls , I found version 10.0.15063.608 , to be so far, the best without strange side effects on keyboard as I have a local spanish wireless microsoft keyboard.

Can get ///// slashes now no problem and no more strange mouselook limited field of views.

As a very small sidenote, the mouselook issues only begin whenever I begin switching chars and switch between fullscreen/windowed mode regardless of what dlls I change.

Must be a Wine Issue, but at least with that dll I can type again no problem.

Hope it helps other people.

Cheers!

[Heroquest]

Appears my problem was that DSETUP.dll did not properly replace dsetup.dll due to Linux case-sensitivity.
After I renamed my DSETUP.dll to dsetup.dll my client ran properly.
Hey, I found that I had BOTH DSETUP.dll and dsetup.dll.
I'm waiting for the thing to patch again to see if the removal of DSETUP.dll fixed it. Whether it worked or not, thank you for the hint!

[sessual]

Anyone try this recently and have issues? I followed the instructions but once you try to configure and install vc runtimes it just says please wait, forever.

[Vormotus]

This is my third iteration of playing P99 on linux and will post here for those that might have still issues.


I have other guides for the old Lubuntu 17 and the 18.10 , right now on version 21.04 and this time I found out that due to the advances in wine+lutris it is even easier THAN EVER to play on linux.

If you have any modern distro, like Ubuntu (and variants like my fav Lubuntu) or Mint , you can install LUTRIS right away.

Lutris will automate everything for you.

All you need is the game client patched with the latest P99 files, install it anywhere you like within your HD and then point Lutris to it.


Once you install lutris using your distro software/package management software (in Lubuntu it is called Discover) Load it up and press the + symbol

https://i.imgur.com/9Ifn3If.jpg

Once that is clicked a new windows will pop up:

https://i.imgur.com/N8W26GF.jpg

Fill these particular sections like this:

https://i.imgur.com/lOeHMXr.jpg

On Executable look within your folders for the EQ client and point it to the "/Launch Titanium.bat" location

On Wine Prefix point a location different from where the client is installed, in my case I installed the client to /Games/MMOS/EQ/P99 , so I pointed the wine prefix (the location for the virtual windows directory emulator) to /Games/MMOS/EQ/P99WINEPREFIX , which is a way to create a particular wine prefix different from all other games in wine I have already installed.

This is a good way to keep all your wine prefixes separated as each game needs special tweaks, dlls and packs and helps with troubleshooting. If you think I am speaking in Blackburrow Gnollish, then just focus on pointing lutris to a differnt location like I said before.

After that do this to make sure you can ALT Tab out of P99 to browse the wiki, forums or watch netflix in the same monitor iwithout issues:

https://i.imgur.com/Ef1Q4rs.jpg

On this tab, enable the WINDOWED Version and a bit below set the resolution you want. This will force the game to run within a windowed environment.

As you can see as my resolution is widescreen 2560x1080 I set it to that but you can change it to whatever your monitor resolution is right now. Most people with normal monitors in 2022 should have 1920x1080 as the standard, but thats just a suggestion, you should know which resolution is yours.

Once you do that the game will be super easy to Alt Tab (If I dont do this every single time I alt tab game borks up, so this worked for me) and play without issues.

There is no need to do anything different except those particular tabs. Please check that at the time of writing this the latest wine stable version for lutris is 7.2 .

But EQ has worked for me with many other versions. It has worked for me with 5.7 , 6.0 and 7.1 as well. If for some reason 7.2 does not work for you you can try those as well if you can find them.

A final word. Midi still has issues for me under Wine (this is due to the way my integrated sound card is , and this might happen to you as well) , even after trying to make it sound via wine through ALSA, so I had to fall back to my very own walkthrough for Lubuntu 17.10 which you can find here: https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295681

If you read it, you can install Qsynth, a midi Fuidsynth frontend for Linux and then use a soundfont file to make mid files sound. You need to launch it before P99 also, else it wont work :)

And that should be all. Lutris by itself does most of the heavy lifting and you could playing in P99 quickly without the need to be a Microsoft slave haha.

Love to everybody!

[Tann]

just put Lubuntu on my newer chromebook, got lutris installed as well but for some reason it keeps saying spelltext is out of date even though I've updated them to the v56 files.

edit:
twas that ol dsetup.dll needing to b e DSETUP.. disregard.

[Park_N_Play]

I've had p1999 and lutris running for a while now with zero problem and out of nowhere this morning "no 3d card found" or something. love it when it works, it's pulling pubes when it's not.

[teebiss]

I'm having mouse issues in Fedora 38. My vertical mouselook speed is fine, but my horizontal speed is annoying slow. Does anyone know of a fix for this? Thanks.

[teebiss]

I'm having mouse issues in Fedora 38. My vertical mouselook speed is fine, but my horizontal speed is annoying slow. Does anyone know of a fix for this? Thanks.

I finally found a fix for this. You have to run WinEQ2 from Lavish Software to limit the foreground FPS of the EverQuest window.

[Ekco]

oh cool thread bump, will read through this later.

tried to get p99 working on my own couple days ago and got to rundll issue and decided to mess with it another day.
https://i.imgur.com/wb5Mkqo.png

[Ekco]

https://i.imgur.com/FqNimmu.png

Thanks, helpful thread was helpful.

[teebiss]

Ekco did you get p99 working in your Linux?

[Ekco]

sorta, levitate spell is having interesting effects

makes my screen shake when the buff is on
when i click it off and jump i get stuck in the air until i re-cast levi and click it off

other than that, having fun
https://i.imgur.com/5Ao71S5.jpeg
https://www.twitch.tv/ekcothewizard

edit: levi bug was due to fps set to 100 thx drosong