HOWTO Counter-Strike 1.6 with WINE

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Introduction

This guide aims to show you how to configure your Gentoo Linux machine to play Counter-Strike 1.6 and other similar games. It covers such things as video settings, mouse settings, WINE installation and Steam installation. The assumed setup for this guide is as follows, however the guide should be mostly universal and will hopefully be expanded to accommodate other setups:

1. You have an nVidia graphics card.
2. You have a Logitech mouse.
3. You have a Steam account which has Half-Life

The installation/configuration will consist of

• Installing JACK and WINE;
• Installing some fonts to allow Steam to correctly draw (Tahoma, specifically);
• Installing Steam via WINE and allowing it to download Counter-Strike;
• Installing some nice extras to make the experience more suited to your needs; and finally,
• Writing a script to bring it all together.

[edit] Installing JACK and WINE

WINE has better support for OSS than for ALSA. Often users find that it is easier to give in and use OSS than to use ALSA. However, ALSA often has widespread use throughout a Linux system. This fact will be dealt with in the final stages of installation.

We need to enable the the jack Useflag enabled as we will be using JACK as our audio daemon for whilst counter-strike is running.

# emerge euse
# euse -E jack

(note doenst it need to be emerge uses ??)

WINE is rapidly developed and often it takes time for Gentoo to mark a WINE package as being stable. We need to tell Portage to accept testing, ~x86 versions of WINE. We will do likewise with JACK

# echo "app-emulation/wine ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
# echo "media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
# emerge -pv app-emulation/wine

Now check that wine will be installed with JACK enabled and if you're satisfied:

# emerge -v app-emulation/wine

Once that's complete you will need to setup WINE, to do this we will execute winecfg as the user you plan on running Counter-Strike

$ winecfg

winecfg should allow you to select JACK as it's audio driver. Do it. You'll also want to choose a place to call C:\ (WINE chooses ~/.wine/drive_c by default) and likewise setup all of your Windows drives. JACK and WINE should both now be installed.

[edit] Install the Tahoma font

There are a few ways one may do this

• Copy the "Fonts" directory from an existing Windows installation into your WINE Windows directory

cp -R /path/to/Windows/Fonts /path/to/wine/windows/

• Download the Tahoma font specifically and copy it into your WINE Windows/Fonts directory

Search Google for "filetype:ttf inurl:tahoma"

Download tahoma.ttf into your WINE Windows/Fonts directory

Now Steam should work to a half-decent degree once it's installed.

[edit] Downloading and installing Steam

Navigate your way to SteamPowered.com and download SteamInstall.exe You'll then need to install it through WINE:

$ wine SteamInstall.exe

It's that easy.

$ wine msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi

Now navigate to your new Steam directory and start Steam, log in and download Counter-Strike.

[edit] Nice extras for pro. gamers

Many of us are (maybe a little too) particular about the way our mouse behaves, or want to increase gamma for gaming so that we can see easier. Under Linux these things are easily done.

[edit] LoMoCo - a mouse tale

For slightly more control over your Logitech mouse, you should install lomoco, a fork of lmctl.

# echo "sys-apps/lomoco ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
# emerge sys-apps/lomoco

We'll use lomoco in the script provided in the next section.

[edit] Increase the polling rate of your USB mouse

FILL ME WHEN YOU'RE NOT TIRED! (Bootloaders for usbhid compiled in, modules.d method for usbhid is a module)

[edit] nVidia-settings for the slightly vision impaired

We can use nVidia's nvidia-settings utility to facilitate scripted alterations to display settings.

# emerge nvidia-settings

[edit] Tying it all together

We have everything installed and configured to a degree. Now we just need to make everything work properly. To do this, we write a script, and a few supporting configuration files.

Place the following file somewhere in your home directory (perhaps ~/cs/counter-strike.sh) It will start JACK, reduce mouse sensitivity for playing, remove mouse acceleration and then start Counter-Strike. When you close Steam it will kill JACK and increase mouse sensitivity.

 
#!/bin/bash
# Start the JACK sound daemon
killall jackd
jackd -d oss & 
# Some use a low sensitivity ingame, higher in X. So we reduce the CPI of the mouse.
lomoco -4
# Disable mouse acceleration
xset m 0 0
# Set gamma correctly
nvidia-settings -l --config="~/cs/cs-nv-settings"
# Start Counter-Strike
wine "C:\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 10

# Undo all of that
lomoco -8
nvidia-settings -l --config="~/cs/Xorg-nv-settings"
killall jackd
  

You'll also need to create the nvidia-settings files which are loaded before and after Counter-Strike. You can do this by executing nvidia-settings and configuring your display (for example, increasing gamma), then copying the created ~/.nvidia-settings-rc file to the required file (in the given example, ~/cs/cs-nv-settings or ~/cs/Xorg-nv-settings)

$ chmod +x ~/cs/counter-strike.sh

Now everything is complete. Simply run the counter-strike.sh script to start Steam and Counter-Strike

[edit] Final notes

I hope that you've found this HowTo article useful in making Counter-Strike work under WINE on Gentoo. Please keep the article up-to-date, add to it and expand it so that it becomes glorious. I would like to see adaptations of the scripts in this system to ATI cards, or perhaps a universal script. Also, it would be fantastic if someone could make ALSA work (well) with Counter-Strike under WINE and also add mouse configurations for non-logitech mice.