Thread: HOWTO: get LOTRO to run under OS/X or Linux

The guide has been moved to the LOTRO Lorebook: http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/LOTRO...x_and_Mac_OS/X

I will try to update it to include the full instructions from LOTROlinux and the WineDB into the guide so it's all in one place. Feel free to help me out with it too

However, I'd still like to keep the disclaimer here:
DISCLAIMER: This is not for the faint of heart. All the information provided in the lorebook entry as well as in this thread is on an as-is basis, no guarantees are made about anything whatsoever and most importantly: IF YOU TRY THIS, YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN! TURBINE DOES NOT, WILL NOT, HAS NEVER AND (probably) WILL NEVER PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR IT! There. If your toaster explodes as a result of this, it's your own fault. The instructions in the lorebook worked for many people but also failed for a few.

DO NOT CONTACT TURBINE TECH SUPPORT IF YOU RUN INTO TROUBLE!

Patching for book 10 using VMWare Player with WinXP on Kubuntu Linux...



Playing the game at work... er... I mean during lunch break ~whistles innocently~
WINE Version 0.9.41 on Kubuntu


Another ingame pic. You'll notice the missing portraits - they cause me some trouble so I turned them off.

How well does it run?

aaah... the texture!! my eyess... its burning.....
:P

great job!!

i have a red hat box at work with some nifty VGA on it... maybe ill try this n create a close-door policy in my office.......

edit: wait, scripts running for Euro servers... would that works on NA servers?

This is great news! I switched to Ubuntu about a month ago and I thought I would never be able to play LOTRO again. Now I just need to get an nVidia graphics card because my Ati card cant run any games in Ubuntu (can't get the drivers to work).

It runs pretty well considering that I only have a 2.4GHz P4 with 1GB and a GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB - which has to power a triple-head display with Beryl on it. Thus the ****** textures, I need the graphics memory for all the work windows.

Usually I run it on low graphics, 25fps locked in troubleshooting settings and low engine speed, I need the processing power elsewhere while the game runs (that iffy work thing, yanno). Crowded areas are problematic with that setting, but the CPU use is only 25%.

The problems start when using anything that needs post processing. Mainly because WINE's support for that is a bit lacking. Cedega might be better for that, but I don't have Cedega available nor do I want to pay for it. Beryl also doesn't play too nice with it, it causes render problems. There's nothing like LOTRO on a 3D-desktop cube though...

On the Mac here in the office it screams. It's a high-end intel Mac, but at the moment I can't get the specs. I'll try to get them later.

Originally Posted by Redbeaver

aaah... the texture!! my eyess... its burning.....
:P

great job!!

i have a red hat box at work with some nifty VGA on it... maybe ill try this n create a close-door policy in my office.......

edit: wait, scripts running for Euro servers... would that works on NA servers?

The scripts work fine for NA servers.

Originally Posted by steelsnake

DISCLAIMER:
2. Configure WINE according to this page here.
.

Sorry for being stupid, but I have no idea how to configure Wine to that page there.

I'm new to Linux. And I have no idea what it means when it says "which defaults to ~/The Lord of the Rings" The ~ folders things refer to. I'm sorry. I just don't know what that is yet. I changed everything in UserPreferences.ini settings, it wouldn't let me save it though because it said it was read only.

For the regedit settings. My Linux folders for that only go to here HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/. There is no /Direct3D folder. Any idea what I should do?

And as for winecfg settings. I got that set properly now. Please, help me. This is the only thing keeping me tied to Windows.

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Sorry for being stupid, but I have no idea how to configure Wine to that page there.

I'm new to Linux. And I have no idea what it means when it says "which defaults to ~/The Lord of the Rings" The ~ folders things refer to. I'm sorry. I just don't know what that is yet. I changed everything in UserPreferences.ini settings, it wouldn't let me save it though because it said it was read only.

~/The Lord of the Rings is just a way of saying wherever that folder is located. In Windows it is C:\Documents and Settings\user (whatever the user name is)\My Doucuments\The Lord of the Rings. Linux of course uses / instead of\ but the principle is the same.

Originally Posted by RadontTheGreat

This is great news! I switched to Ubuntu about a month ago and I thought I would never be able to play LOTRO again. Now I just need to get an nVidia graphics card because my Ati card cant run any games in Ubuntu (can't get the drivers to work).

Installing ATI Drivers can be a pain in Linux - but it does work. The key for ubuntu is that you have to rebuild the fglrx package - the one that comes with Ubunutu (up to and including Gutsy) is out of date and doesn't play well with ATI drivers.

I use Ubuntu (just started over recently) and have managed to get City of Heroes running pretty darn good under it (with Cedega, not Wine though it uses Wine). I had to follow the instructions here and then I used the Graphical ATI installer to reinstall the drivers to fix some links that weren't created with those instructions (I started out by removing all ATI drivers of course).

It ended up working well, not much of a performance hit (I actually see better performance in some spots).

I will have to check out the tips the OP put down to see if that works on this game - I still have XP I dual boot into, but running this game under Ubuntu would be great.

Originally Posted by Chui

~/The Lord of the Rings is just a way of saying wherever that folder is located. In Windows it is C:\Documents and Settings\user (whatever the user name is)\My Doucuments\The Lord of the Rings. Linux of course uses / instead of\ but the principle is the same.

Sweet, now I just need to get past the regedit thing because mine doesn't even have the Direct3D folders.

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Sweet, now I just need to get past the regedit thing because mine doesn't even have the Direct3D folders.

You can start regedit in wine, i.e. "wine regedit", and go from there. The folders _should_ be there, but I'll double-check at work tomorrow. Truthfully I haven't played much LOTRO lately, winter is approaching which means ~80hrs work weeks.

Summer is when I can play a lot,

anyone had much experience running lotro on an intel mac using a windows install via boot camp? it should just run as normal outta the box shouldnt it, if you are booting into windows that should just act like a standard windows machine as it's not emulated yeah?

Anybody tried this with Suse Linux 10.1 or whatever the latest version is?

I've got my old Suse Linux server box sitting here staring at me vacantly since I shut down our own hosting business and thought maybe I'd give it a try if there isnt some distinct problem with Suse and Vmware Player, Wine, and or Lotro.

Originally Posted by feenicks

anyone had much experience running lotro on an intel mac using a windows install via boot camp? it should just run as normal outta the box shouldnt it, if you are booting into windows that should just act like a standard windows machine as it's not emulated yeah?

Way back when these threads first started a dev, I think it was floon beetle but not sure, said he was doing exactly that on a MacPro I believe.

Originally Posted by steelsnake

You can start regedit in wine, i.e. "wine regedit", and go from there. The folders _should_ be there, but I'll double-check at work tomorrow. Truthfully I haven't played much LOTRO lately, winter is approaching which means ~80hrs work weeks.

Summer is when I can play a lot,

Oh, and my folders are not there. At all.

Currently everytime I try to run the game I get a popup that says:

The game-client was passed invalid command line parameters. [205]

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Oh, and my folders are not there. At all.

Currently everytime I try to run the game I get a popup that says:

The game-client was passed invalid command line parameters. [205]

Oke, I just went ahead and wiped my wine and LOTRO install on my linux box to see where it goes wrong... number one thing I saw was that Wine indeed doesn't seem to have a Direct3D folder in the registry anymore. So, for the time being I'll skip it.

Next thing is to wait for the download of the LOTRO client to finish I'll post more once I got that.

Originally Posted by feenicks

anyone had much experience running lotro on an intel mac using a windows install via boot camp? it should just run as normal outta the box shouldnt it, if you are booting into windows that should just act like a standard windows machine as it's not emulated yeah?

Yes, I've been playing LOTRO on a windows partition (via Bootcamp) since Beta Oct '06. Runs great. Yes, for bootcamp you hold down the "option" key and boot onto a partition drive that runs XP native, not emulated.

Well, I managed to get it all running smoothly.. but the graphics are all borked up (probably my WINE installation) so I will just continue to Dual Boot into Windows for now

Sweet I'm looking forward to seeing what you post back.

I lack those folders, and have no idea where to put those scripts exactly. This is going to be great. I love Linux, I really do, but I am always running LotRO if I am on the computer. So until this gets working my Linux is rendered useless. =(

Oke, I just went ahead and wiped my wine and LOTRO install on my linux box to see where it goes wrong... number one thing I saw was that Wine indeed doesn't seem to have a Direct3D folder in the registry anymore. So, for the time being I'll skip it

You have to create those values in the wine registry to get it to work. It's just like editing a normal windows registry. I also installed the nvidia drivers for linux, rather than using the video card drivers that came with X11.

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Sweet I'm looking forward to seeing what you post back.

I lack those folders, and have no idea where to put those scripts exactly. This is going to be great. I love Linux, I really do, but I am always running LotRO if I am on the computer. So until this gets working my Linux is rendered useless. =(

You have to add the folders manually do a

Code:

wine regedit

from the terminal and then locate the spot they Direct3D key should go.

The scripts need to go into the same folder as the lotroclient.exe file.

I would love Parallels support for LoTRO, but from what I understand, this is more of a problem for swsoft than Turbine. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Parallels only supports DX8, and LoTRO is DX9 / DX10. I'm a little surprised that it won't run in one of the latest betas of VMWare Fusion, which theoretically support DX9.0c - has anyone tried this out?

The wine solution is a bit awkward - the reason you need that virtual machine is because wine doesn't support the .net runtime (ah, VMs in VMs!) yet.

i'm still downloading the patches at work ~laughs~ we don't have the bandwidth here to get the stuff any faster.

it will be monday until i can check it all out from scratch.

I'm afraid Turbine probably takes a dim view on people distributing patches, else patching under linux without any need for a VM is quite possible.

Ok, located where they should go.

How exactly do I create those with those values.

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Ok, located where they should go.

How exactly do I create those with those values.

Fore Direct3D?

Right click the hive (the 'folder' that the key is going to go into) and select Create Key

Name the key Direct3D [exact uppercase & lowercase]
Click on the key and then right click in the area to the right (there should be one value that says REG_SZ - Not Defined)
Select New String Value

Name the value for the Memory as listed above in the thread. Click ok then double click the new key and type in the memory value.

Repeat for the second key.

Is this correct? Well, I know the 256 part might now be correct because I have no idea what my video memory is. Is there any easy way to check in the terminal or somehow on Linux?

And, assuming my video memory is 256, is that set up properly?

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Is this correct? Well, I know the 256 part might now be correct because I have no idea what my video memory is. Is there any easy way to check in the terminal or somehow on Linux?

And, assuming my video memory is 256, is that set up properly?

Yep! Thats right

For getting your video card memory, you should be able to use the Hardware Information screen (System -> Administration -> Hardware Information)

in a shell:
jennifer@netadmin:~$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log|grep Memory
(--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 131072 kBytes

(there may be other output but this line ought to be there as well)

Dividing that number by 1024 tells me I have 128MByte

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7300.html

That is my video card. The GeForce 7300 LE. Please tell me that 64 bit thing doesn't mean the memory. If so... it's safe to assume I really should upgrade? Haha.

There isn't much information on it under the Device Manager. Just the name, and that it's made by Nvidia and is PCI.

Originally Posted by steelsnake

in a shell:
jennifer@netadmin:~$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log|grep Memory
(--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 131072 kBytes

(there may be other output but this line ought to be there as well)

Dividing that number by 1024 tells me I have 128MByte

That works

Originally Posted by xandervincent

That is my video card. The GeForce 7300 LE. Please tell me that 64 bit thing doesn't mean the memory. If so... it's safe to assume I really should upgrade?

Well - at work I run it on a GeForce 5500, 128MB, and it works... however, with graphics only on medium or low.

Alright. So mine is indeed a 256 since 262144 was the number it gave me. I'm guessing that 64-bit thing meant something else on that site.

Okay. So, here is where I stand so far.

UserPreferences.ini is in this folder:

/home/xander/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online/

winecfg settings says it is set for Windows 2000

my wine regedit settings are now all correct

And all my LotRO files from when I installed it on Windows XP are located in this folder on Linux:

/home/xander/.wine/drive_c/Program_Files/Turbine/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online/


All good so far then?

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Alright. So mine is indeed a 256 since 262144 was the number it gave me. I'm guessing that 64-bit thing meant something else on that site.

Okay. So, here is where I stand so far.

UserPreferences.ini is in this folder:

/home/xander/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online/

winecfg settings says it is set for Windows 2000

my wine regedit settings are now all correct

And all my LotRO files from when I installed it on Windows XP are located in this folder on Linux:

/home/xander/.wine/drive_c/Program_Files/Turbine/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online/


All good so far then?

Looks to be too many underscores there - I am guessing that most of those underscores represent spaces on your filesystem right? (other than the /drive_c/ one). I ask this because the game client will look in ~/The Lord of the Rings Online/ for the .ini file (No underscores).

The actual folder that the client resides in doesn't matter - when I tested, I put it in a folder in my Home folder [~/LOTRO].

So far so good though

Yeah those underscores are all spaces.

Ok, so tomorrow morning alls I have left to do is save those two scripts and put them in the LotRO folder right? I don't really understand the script part. On the wine page it says something about the two scripts and bash or something. I have no idea what that means or what to do there.

Because I'm still getting that same error.

Originally Posted by xandervincent

Yeah those underscores are all spaces.

Ok, so tomorrow morning alls I have left to do is save those two scripts and put them in the LotRO folder right? I don't really understand the script part. On the wine page it says something about the two scripts and bash or something. I have no idea what that means or what to do there.

Because I'm still getting that same error.

Yep - the scripts are basic , you just run the lotrolauncher.script file from the terminal (make sure to chmod +x it); You might have to edit the script a little to make it not check for a secure ticket.

Originally Posted by carlosjuero

Yep - the scripts are basic , you just run the lotrolauncher.script file from the terminal (make sure to chmod +x it); You might have to edit the script a little to make it not check for a secure ticket.

Not much of that made sense. =/

How do I run it from the terminal? Like, seriously, I have no idea how to run a script from there.

And what is chmod +x it? I apologize.

xandervincent, these are really basic linux things. For your own sanity when using linux, I'd advise learning as much as you possibly can. I learned a lot from the O'Reilly linux book--some of it is outtdated, but for the basics, it's pretty good. Here's another site: http://tldp.org/

I'd start with this guide: http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

Running LOTRO under linux means you need to be familiar with the command line and basic script editing. That guide should give you much of what you need to know. (The skills you'll use elsewhere, too.)

Originally Posted by erwosdklarien

I would love Parallels support for LoTRO, but from what I understand, this is more of a problem for swsoft than Turbine. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Parallels only supports DX8, and LoTRO is DX9 / DX10. I'm a little surprised that it won't run in one of the latest betas of VMWare Fusion, which theoretically support DX9.0c - has anyone tried this out?

I too have been trying to get LOTRO to work with Parallels on a MacBook Pro. Not only is the Direct X version a problem, but I think the graphics driver is too. I'm no expert, but it looks like Parallels only uses it's own graphics driver, not NVidia's. I've updated the NVidia driver a few times on XP running in Parallels, yet it doesn't show up.

I'd be curious to know if anyone has successfully gotten LOTRO to work on a MacBook Pro even if it's without Parallels and using some other emulator. BootCamp isn't an emulator and I really don't want to use BootCamp. I've gotten too used to switching back and forth on a whim without rebooting.

Alright, I'll read the entire guides sometime soon. I know how to do some stuff with the terminal. Just not run scripts.

I just need to know how to do this part.

"To launch the client on Linux you need to download this script and this support script (rename it to urlencode.sh). Extra details about the script can be found on the script developers site.

These scripts must be placed in directory containing the file lotroclient.exe

To run the script type either bash ./scriptname or ./scriptname if the scripts permissions allow for execute (where scriptname is the name of the downloaded script)."

I saved both scripts, and put the files in the /home/xander/.wine/drive_c/Program_Files/Turbine/The Lord of the Rings Online/ folder where all of lotro's files are (including the launcher).

I just don't get bash./scriptname. I typed bash ./lotrolauncher.script into the terminal and it doesn't do anything. I'm so close I don't want to have to read an entire book just to get these last two steps working. =(