full circle magazine #65

5

Lucas has learned all he knows from

repeatedly breaking his system, then

having no other option but to

discover how to fix it. You can email

Lucas at: lswest34@gmail.com.

recommend changing the default

path too much, but so long as it

ends up in the correct Wine folder,

it shouldn't be an issue. Once

you've selected the path, hit the

“okay” button. In newer versions of

the installer, the button may be

the direct “install” button, but if it

says “okay” and nothing happe n s,

the install button should be in

roughly the same spot as the first

button, but on the other side of

the window.

For anyone not interested in

fighting with a black screen, you

can easily start the installation

from a Windows PC, and copy the

resulting Guild Wars 2 folder. It

also works in a Virtual Machine. I

wouldn't recommend letting the

game patch in a VM though, since

the resulting folder can get rather

large. Once you've gotten the

Gw2.exe, Gw2.dat, and Gw2.tmp,

you're basically ready to patch your

game.

In order to patch your game,

you'll need to create some sort of

launcher, so that you can pass an

argument to Gw2.exe. If you're

using PlayOnLinux, you can do this

by choosing Configure, and adding

-dx9single to the arguments field.

This stops the black screen issue

(and also the perpetual connection

attempt). If you're using plain old

Wine, you'll just need to either

create a .desktop file (I haven't

tested arguments in these sorts of

files, but it should work), or else a

bash file that looks something like

this:

#!/bin/bash

wine $PATH/Gw2.exe -dx9single

This worked for me during the

beta weekends (since then, I've

switched to PlayOnLinux in order

to have easy access to the raw

input patches). It's also

recommended that you have

d3dx9, gecko, and mono installed.

(Though both gec ko and mono

don't appear to have an impact , it's

better to have them and not need

them).

Once your launcher is created,

you're all ready to start patching

(trust me, it can take a while).

Some people report intermittent

crashes of the launcher when using

Wine, but I didn't have this issue. If

you want to risk leaving it

unattended as it downloads, you

can give it a shot, but you may

need to restart the launcher

occasionally.

Hopefully I've appealed to any

MMO fans with this article. If I

have, and you'd like to see these

sorts of articles continuing, please

let me know (along with any names

of games you'd like to see covered

– if I can get it working, I'll cover it).

In case you have any questions,

comments, or suggestions about

this article (or ideas for future

articles), you can reach me at

lswest34@gmail.com. If you do

email me, please include FCM or

C&C in the subject line, so I don't

overlook the email. Also, if anyone

is playing Guild Wars 2 and has any

suggestions to make it run better

(or want to share some tips/ask

questions), you're also welcome to

email me. My home world is

Gandara, but, thanks to the

guesting feature, odds are I should

be able to help out just about

anyone.

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