In this article I am going to share a bit of my experience and the bad taste in my mouth that it has left me the homework of try to be able to execute this title from the popular Resident Evil video game franchise. Resident Evil 5 was a title that was released in 2009 and was widely accepted by the community.
At that time I had the luck to be able to get a copy at its launch and be able to enjoy this game on the XBOX 360. Many years later (in 2014) I found an offer on steam in which they offered Resident Evil 4,5 and 6 for 12.99 USD (about 8-10 euros at the time) which I saw as a bargain and well I bought it.
Since then I had never been able to play the titles because I did not have much time and also the graphics card of my team had given its last breath.
Until a few months ago (and after having gotten an economic chart) and knowing about the launch of the Resident Evil 3 remake, I started to finish a game that had not finished "Resident Evil 6". And after that it made me want to go back to enjoying the other two previous titles Resident Evil 4 and 5.
With which the 4 and 6 enjoy them in Xbox GamePass (due to the bargain of November last year) and now that I am about to install Resident Evil 5 (since xbox one does not support the disc I buy for the 360 (go fraud)) on my computer.
Resident Evil 5 installation process on Linux
With the arrival of the project Steam Proton and Compatibility it offers to be able to run Windows titles on Linux without having to get into trouble, I thought it was perfect to be able to just “download” it and be able to enjoy it.
The download is about 7.2 GB which takes about 20-min to 1hr depending on your connection. After that, just click on "execute" (I do not recommend running it, as this may give you more steps to follow) and the game will download some dependencies necessary for its execution which are Games for Windows Live (the famous gfwl) and directx libraries.
You give play again and you will see the intro of the game which by surprise stays on a black background. Here the first problem is the famous “black screen”. And this is where the audacity for wanting to run the game on Linux begins.
In theory in order to avoid the whole process What I had to do, we could rely on Lutris, which with its fantastic installation scripts automates the entire process. But to my surprise the script didn't work for me because when I ran the game I got the same error again.
Doing a little research, I found that the error is due to the intro of the game requires to have the Windows player to be able to show us that little scene and by not detecting it the game stays on that black screen. Besides that There is a certain error that occurs when not being able to connect to Games for Windows Live.
To solve this we must install the Windows player on our installation from Wine, Lutris, Proton, PlayOnLinux or Crossover (I mention these because I tried each of them and they all turned out the same).
Although the solution is simple The process is somewhat tedious, since Because Windows XP is an "obsolete" system, the Steam installation if it detects that you are running on this version of Windows sImplemente does not open, that is why it must be run under Windows 7.
But when you want to install windows media player 10 doesn't allow you to do it as it can only be done on Windows XP 32 bit and proton as well as Steam for Windows do the installation under 64 bits.
That is why I mention that it is a mess.
Troubleshooting and installing dependencies
To solve all this, we must rely on winetricks or in case of doing it on steam with proton We are going to use protontricks (basically winetricks, but from steam). Here it is recommended that uninstall your game and reinstall it and when this happens do not run it.
What we are going to do after we have installed it, is go to the installation folder (in steam just secondary click on the title and we can open the folder where it is hosted “Properties-> Local Files-> Browse Local Files... ").
In wine, PlayonLinux, Crossover or Lutris we can find the steam folder in the folder of our user and we enter the application folders (you can search the network, what are their paths) we enter the prefix created with Wine.
Everyone names it as “Steam” unless you've done a custom install and renamed the prefix.
The first thing we are going to do is enter the folder where the game is and let's remove the gfwl dependency the path within the steam installation is "steam / steamapps / common / Resident Evil 5" and we are going to edit the file "BH5AE_install.vdf" and we are going to eliminate the following lines.
"Run Process"
{
"GFWL"
{
"process 1" "%INSTALLDIR%\\redist\\gfwlivesetup.exe"
"command 1" "/q"
"HasRunKey" "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\CAPCOM\\RESIDENT EVIL 5\\GFWL"
}
}
Save and close the file.
Now we are going to install the dependencies. For Lutris and proton we are going to position ourselves in a terminal the route "Steam / steam / steamapps / compatdata" where we will find the prefix created for the game which is always "21690".
And we are going to execute (for lutris):
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx winetricks
For proton:
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx protontricks
While for Wine, Crossover or Playonlinux we can simply run winetriks and a window like this will open for us.
Let's select “select the default wineprefix”, we click on accept and we will execute “winecfg” and let's change the version to imitate from “Windows 7” to “Windows XP” we apply changes and close.
Again in the same previous window, let's select the first option that is "Install a Windows DLL or component".
And we are going to install the dependencies of the game that are "wmp10 d3dcompiler_43 d3dx9 xact_jun2010”And in the case of wmp10 it is necessary to install wmp9 first.
If you get the error that your 64-bit system (the version of Windows you are mimicking) you are going to have to delete the folder with the prefix "pfx" and you are going to create it under 32 bits running the command:
WINEPREFIX=/21690//pfx WINEARCH=win32 winetricks
Or for proton:
WINEPREFIX=/21690//pfx WINEARCH=win32 protontricks
And you do the process again to install the dependencies, It is advisable to install one by one to avoid problems and the process becomes more tedious.
As an additional installation and that was recommended in forums where I investigated, it is to install internet explorer 8, xatc, vcrun2012, dotnet 20 and dotnet 40.
You can do all this with the command:
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx winetricks wmp9 d3dcompiler_43 d3dx9 xact_jun2010 ie8 xatc vcrun2012 dotnet20 dotnet40
But as I say I recommend one by one graphically.
Finally after installing all this, let's install a necessary update for wmp10 does not have errors, for this we must download the following file from lutris. The link is this.
You can download the file in the folder where you are positioned prefix with:
wget https://lutris.net/files/tools/windowsmedia-kb942423-x86-intl.exe
And we are going to install it with:
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx wine windowsmedia-kb942423-x86-intl.exe
If you did everything right, the installation of this update is done in less than 30 seconds and now it's the turn to change the version of Windows to imitate "Windows 7":
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx winetricks
O:
WINEPREFIX=/21690/pfx protontricks
We return to select the default prefix, accept and click on "run winecfg" and accept.
Here, before changing the version to imitate we are going to add an application by clicking on “add application” and go to the path “program files/windows media player” and we select "wmplayer.exe" We click on open and we will see that it was added to the window.
We select it and in version to imitate we assign “Windows XP”, now We select "default configuration" and assign the version to imitate from “Windows 7” since if we leave it in Windows XP simply steam will not open.
We accept and with that we can now run the game on Linux.
In case you have run the game first and it will download GFWL, you have to delete the record of the system which we can do from the same window where we install the dependencies.
Nothing but here instead of selecting the option to install a dll or component we are going to select the option of "run regedit"
And we are going to position ourselves in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ Software \\ CAPCOM \\ RESIDENT EVIL 5 \\ GFWL" and here you can delete the registry or change the value from "1" to "0" save, close Steam, Playonlinux, etc. Or you log out and log back in.
And with that you can already enjoy the game.
As additional information, they can also install a patch which eliminates some errors and the dependency on GFWL, this is downloaded from the following link where the instructions to install it are indicated.