Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts

Saturday, 3 January 2009

Civilization IV Beyond the Sword in Ubuntu with CrossOver Games

I recently tried to install and run Civilization IV Beyond the Sword in Ubuntu. And it worked flawlessly!

* Civilization IV by Firaxis and its range of games has always in been a favorite of mine.
* Beyond the Sword is a recent extention to this game.
* Ubuntu is a linux distrobution that I use.
* For this to work I used CodeWeaver's CrossOver Games. CrossOver is based on Wine, with some not-yet-in-Wine code and some proprietary code.
* And I installed this on Dell D820 laptop PC.

There was nothing complicated in installing it either. And from CDs.

* I simple installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.
* then installed CrossOver Games 7.1.0
* then inside CrossOver installed Civilization IV.
* then installed Beyond the sword. It automatically updated my Civ4 and installed DirectX which I presume CrossOver intercepted.
* then I downloaded the most recent patch of BTS. 3.17. Installed it inside CrossOver.
* Then ran the game.
* Sound did not work 1st time, but specifying ALSA as sound in CrossOver fixed it.

Video introduction, etc everything seems to work. In fullscreen and as a windowed version.

The only think I noticied was that city production bar did not change colour, but changing that to a number in the options solved that. There may be other missing graphics, but I have not seen any. May need to run in side by side of a windows version to notice these things. Certainly nothing game playwise is missing. However I did notice one MOD did not work.

Civilization IV is only marked with a Bronse on CodeWeavers site, however I would say Gold, as 99.5% work.

If you do have problems, many of the forums recommend in Civ's ini files to disable intro videos etc. I have not needed to touch those files.

* Ubuntu thread on Civ4 BTS
* Ubuntu howto on Civ4 BTS
* CodeWeavers page on Civ IV compatability
* WineHQ page on Civ IV