Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Weird edge-case bug in any non-standard WINE version
redneckdrow Feb 12
From time to time, I like to fire up my favorite edutainment game from my childhood, The Oregon Trail: 5th Edition, it's really just a souped-up version of II without the creepy mouths.

I noticed a really strange bug when using anything related to Staging/GE/Proton etc. The interface, when starting a game, includes tabs on the journal pages that allow you to select bonus skills and other such things. In regular WINE, they work correctly, but in Staging/Lutris/WINE-GE etc. they're un-clickable. I've spent months trying to figure out why this is. Screengrabs don't catch the behavior, or I would have posted screenshots. I could try recording with OBS if it comes to that.

I'm also using the 1.1 patch that was originally provided on The Learning Company's website.

Yes, it's a minor thing, that's why it drives me nuts! I'd really like to use FSR/Gamescope and the like to upscale it, and you can't do that with vanilla WINE without jumping through hoops.

The disk is fine. I checked it by using cdrdao to create a 1:1 dump (which has always given me the best results backing up CD-ROMs of all types on Linux):

 sudo cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --datafile $*.bin --device /dev/sr0 --rspeed 4 --driver generic-mmc-raw $*.toc
It works even when dd or ddrescue fail.

using sha1sum returns

d6ddd53c5e49d9418e7a1c3553055b57e58f7d4a

Checking redump.org returns the same value.

I'm truly flummoxed. Any version of WINE should work, not just vanilla.

Anyone else ever run into similar problems in other niche games?
This topic has an answer marked - jump to answer.
whizse Feb 12
Quoting: redneckdrowI'm truly flummoxed. Any version of WINE should work, not just vanilla.
Well, no?

I mean, there's a reason those patches are in staging and haven't been upstreamed yet.

It's usually not that hard to bisect between staging and vanilla to figure out what patchset causes a regression. I might have time to give it a try later if I can reproduce the issue.
redneckdrow Feb 14
Yeah, I could have worded that better. I should have mentioned that it's not a recent bug; I know the problem existed when I first tried Staging around v1.9, and that it still exists in everything derived from Staging. But even the latest vanilla works, even though Staging has been merged more than once since then.

I would have bisected it myself, If I didn't have 8 years of patches to go through. Compiling every version (twice) since 1.8 would likely take me weeks. A minor interface bug doesn't bother me that badly. I'll probably bite that particular bullet when it finally drives me mad.
whizse Feb 14
Quoting: redneckdrowI would have bisected it myself, If I didn't have 8 years of patches to go through. Compiling every version (twice) since 1.8 would likely take me weeks. A minor interface bug doesn't bother me that badly. I'll probably bite that particular bullet when it finally drives me mad.
git bisect isn't quite that bad. It's a binary search so even a billion commits should be covered in 30 steps (supposedly!). Actually getting ancient Wine releases to build on a modern system: a much worse problem.

However I was thinking more along the lines of bisecting the patches in staging until the culprit is found and file a bug. There are tools included in staging to do this. It's still a bit of work and of course no guarantee it will be fixed!

I actually tried the game and I think I found the tabs you described. But I can't reproduce the bug with Proton 8. It works the same as in unpatched Wine. I did have some other issues with Proton. Undecorated windows, misplaced menus etc. I'm guessing those are caused by the full screen hack.
redneckdrow Feb 15
Well, that's some progress at least, it used to just crash if it was run without a virtual desktop, let alone the fullscreen hack. I appreciate the help!

The errors could be related to the fact that the game seems hard-coded to run at a specific resolution, regardless of what the specs say. It will resize a virtual desktop, even one in a resolution it claims to support, to 640x480. I suppose I never noticed that as a kid.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register

Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.
Register Forgot Login?
★ Support Us
Popular this week
Search or view by category
Contact
Latest Comments
Latest Forum Posts
Misc