Gina under Linux

[Nokio]

Introduction
Over time I saw a few people use a software called Gina that does Audio trigger and text trigger/timer. I never looked at it since I had my bash script that does pretty much the same and I am quite happy with it. In the past weeks I saw a few reference to people saying that Gina just don't work or install under Linux and I was curious to checkout why. Long story short, I went on to try and see if it can be made to work and if I could in the process share my findinds so that maybe other can benefit from it. Much like I benefit from the work of others.

Installing/Running Gina under Linux

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks -q dotnet462
wget https://eq.gimasoft.com/GINA/setup.exe -P "$HOME/Gina/"
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine $HOME/Gina/setup.exe


What works


Adding your many character log files
Creating/running triggers
Sharing, I was able to import a basic bundle
Overlays work and can be moved around to your liking
All in all, I don't know much about what people achieve to do with the tool but it seems to all work, beside one thing


What does not work (maybe just for now)


Text to Speech


Research
With the installation done and the application running, when you add your character log file there is a voice setting and it's blank. Nothing in the drop down menu. What I did is install a Windows Virtual machine because I wanted to see what would appear in that field. Under a fresh Windows 10 2 options appear in that voice drop down.


Microsoft Zira Desktop
Microsoft David Desktop


A quick search made me learn a bit more about Zira and David : https://www.thewindowsclub.com/microsoft-david-hazel-zira
It seems that under Windows10/11 Zira/David/Hazel are the default voice for US english at least.
But I only have Zira and David under Gina. I went and started the settings for the "change voice narrator" In there I see quite a few voice


Microsoft David
Microsoft Zira
Microsoft Mark
Microsoft Zira Desktop
Microsoft David Desktop


No Hazel, he must not be installed from a language pack or something. BUT Gina is not showing the other 3 either.

Test1
Be carefull with the following
You will mess your wine prefix.
If you do so just delete the prefix folder and repeat the installation process

I learned that using winetricks you can install the SAPI5.1 SpeechSDK to get the older voice from prior Vista. The SDK is available for download and can be quickly installed using winetricks


WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks -q speechsdk


But in doing so. It set the windows version to windowsXP(from windows7 prior). Because the speechSDK don't work on anything else. If you now try to start Gina. It just crash. If you then use winecfg to set the windows version back to windows 7. Gina still crash. Delete the prefix and restart

Test2
I learned that using winetricks you can install SAPI, which seems to be the other available option under winetricks for speech api : https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks/blob/master/src/winetricks


WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks -q sapi


Doing the base install plus installation sapi changes nothing once you start Gina. Still no voice options. At least the prefix did not get messed up it seems.

Test3
So then I went on to try and see if I could get an application in the wine prefix to test the TTS (Text to Speech)


From a freshly installed prefix
cd "$HOME/Gina/drive_c/Program Files/"
wget http://balabolka.site/balabolka_portable.zip
unzip balabolka_portable.zip
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine "$HOME/Gina/drive_c/Program Files/Balabolka/balabolka.exe"


Using these I was able to get a software to run inside the wine prefix but much like Gina it does not see any voice to use for TTS.
After some research I found that you have to install additionnal elements. Some of which are, it seems, installed by default with a windows installation.


wget https://download.microsoft.com/down...eechPlatformRuntime/SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine msiexec /i SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi
wget https://download.microsoft.com/down...B-173D937BEED4/MSSpeech_TTS_en-US_ZiraPro.msi
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine msiexec /i MSSpeech_TTS_en-US_ZiraPro.msi
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks msxml6
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine "$HOME/Gina/drive_c/Program Files/Balabolka/balabolka.exe"


Now the software sees the voice and is able to do TTS. Which I think it awesome!
You can install more voice from : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27224
If I then start Gina. There is still no voice under the option.

My thinking is now as follow. I think that Gina may be hardcoded to "only" see


Microsoft Zira Desktop
Microsoft David Desktop


The Zira voice I installed seems to be refered to as ZiraPro and not Zira Desktop. They sound exactly the same.

Ending
This is where I stand for now. If I have more time later I will try to see if I can somehow find a way to download or extract the Microsoft Zira Desktop voice to bring over under my wine prefix. For now I will think on this and leave it here.

I hope this is helpfull to someone who may not need the Text to Speech.

[Nokio]

For Reference, I just did an install of Kubuntu22.04 in a virtual machine.

There was a slight difference vs my previous instruction, it is not related to Gina.
When I did the dotnet462 install, wine complained about a possible bug with a reference to a bug page on winehq webpage.
I added a --force and the rest completed with success.

Kubuntu22.04
From a fresh install into a first boot


sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
reboot
sudo apt install mono-complete
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo wget -nc -O /usr/share/keyrings/winehq-archive.key https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo wget -nc -P /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/jammy/winehq-jammy.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
sudo apt install winetricks


Now to install and run Gina


WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks --force -q dotnet462
wget https://eq.gimasoft.com/GINA/setup.exe -P "$HOME/Gina/"
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine $HOME/Gina/setup.exe

[freezzo]

For what its worth, I was just going through this with GINA on Mac using some newer crossover builds. I had to use SAPI winetricks, used dotnet 4.8, and installed the voices from http://espeak.sourceforge.net/ and they were working. The issue I have however is that it doesn't look like my log file is actively parsed, so no triggers ever fire, although I can search the logs fine and it shows it should trigger.

[freezzo]

Oh, I also installed d3d, d3d_compile42/46/47 as well.

[Nokio]

After more testing on my side, turns out mono-complete is not needed at all. So just skip that part. And it works fine. I tested under many ubuntu/debian variant as well as opensuse tumbleweed and Gina works great. If you also do as Freezzo said


WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" winetricks -q sapi
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/espeak/files/espeak/espeak-1.48/setup_espeak-1.48.04.exe -P "$HOME/Gina/"
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Gina" wine $HOME/Gina/setup_espeak-1.48.04.exe


You will also have text to speech available.

[freezzo]

Yea, I think i disabled mono on mine. Only issue I have is the actual log reading in realtime. I have yet to figure that out. It doesn't appear to be related to wine though because I can't even get a windows VM version to read from the mac shared drive either, also Windows to Windows shared drive does work.

[Nokio]

I once, in the past, tried a windows VM to read the log from a shared drive and I had the same result it did not work at all.

I have not had that issue using the steps I described.

I don't have experience on mac to be helpfull as to why your wine setup would act differently than mine.

[freezzo]

I also have to install sapi and espeak or setup.exe wont run. I installed dxvk to get it to stop flickering. I think its a permissions thing from one wine running eq and another wine running GINA.

[Nokio]

Interesting.

On my side using dotnet462 there is no flicker at all and I dont have to install anything more than what I wrote.

I tried to do it again using dotnet48. Without the d3d_compile it never works. If I add in the d3d_compile it work like 1 time out of 10. So it's not smooth at all. When it does install Gina. It flickers and it's not working smooth.

[sharkukri]

Introduction
I never looked at it since I had my bash script that does pretty much the same and I am quite happy with it.

As a fellow Linux user, could you please share your script?

[Indefinite]

It's definitely no GINA; though, EQ Alert (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=403337) works on linux if you're looking for a linux parser with TTS. Doesn't have any overlays or a GUI yet but I welcome any forks or pull-requests!

[Vivitron]

Introduction
Over time I saw a few people use a software called Gina that does Audio trigger and text trigger/timer. I never looked at it since I had my bash script that does pretty much the same and I am quite happy with it. In the past weeks I saw a few reference to people saying that Gina just don't work or install under Linux and I was curious to checkout why. Long story short, I went on to try and see if it can be made to work and if I could in the process share my findinds so that maybe other can benefit from it. Much like I benefit from the work of others.


Thanks for taking the time to post this. Like you I often play from Linux and have a custom setup for the log parsing I care most about, but my guild has an extensive GINA package so it will be nice to have the option to run it to get the same alerts they do.

[meson]

For what its worth, I was just going through this with GINA on Mac using some newer crossover builds. I had to use SAPI winetricks, used dotnet 4.8, and installed the voices from http://espeak.sourceforge.net/ and they were working. The issue I have however is that it doesn't look like my log file is actively parsed, so no triggers ever fire, although I can search the logs fine and it shows it should trigger.

Would you care to post some more detailed instructions and links? I tried to replicate that but im not getting anywhere. Trying this on an M1 Mac with latest Crossover.

[sharkukri]

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Like you I often play from Linux and have a custom setup for the log parsing I care most about, but my guild has an extensive GINA package so it will be nice to have the option to run it to get the same alerts they do.

Would you be able to share your custom setup?