Play Istaria On Linux

Linux OS

Many members of the community, including those among the development team, utilize Linux full-time and have created resources related to running Istaria on Linux.

Ubuntu 23.04 Steps

The guide below was tested with Ubuntu 23.04. Special thanks to NetLore for creating this guide. The original GitHub gist can be found here.

General Steps:

  1. Install core components (Wine emulator and Java).
  2. Install Istaria
  3. Configure Istaria desktop shortcut
  4. Play!

Special Notes

  1. Istaria is a 32-bit application and requires a 32-bit Wine prefix (more below). The instructions below assume you're running Ubuntu on an x86_64 PC (Intel or AMD).
  2. Java 1.8 is needed because the default version of Java ( OpenJDK 17 ) included with Ubuntu does not work with the launcher.
  3. The instructions below use console commands for consistency.

The instructions below assume you have downloaded the Istaria installer "setup.exe" from the Istaria site and the file is in your ~/Downloads folder.

1. Install the core components.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine wine32:i386 winetricks openjdk-8-jre

2. Create a dedicated prefix for Istaria (WINEPREFIX allows Wine to install its data into a folder other than the default ".wine"), so that you can separate different applications and avoid unwanted interactions between them.

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-istaria" WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot

3. Add needed components to the wine prefix using "winetricks". These components are the Microsoft C++ libraries, DirectX 9 and fonts.

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-istaria" winetricks vcrun2005
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-istaria" winetricks d3dx9_36
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-istaria" winetricks corefonts

4. Run the Istaria installer within the same prefix.

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-istaria" wine $HOME/Downloads/setup.exe
  • The installer will incorrectly detect memory and display a warning - click Yes to continue.
  • Don't download Java
  • Don't install the Windows C++ libraries

5. When the Istaria install is complete, the desktop shortcut is configured to use "Windows Java". We need to configure it to use "Linux Java" (installed above).

Option A: Use your favourite editor to edit the file named "~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Istaria/Play Istaria.desktop", and Replace the "Exec=....." line with the following, remembering to replace <USERNAME> with your username. If you are unsure about your home folder or username, use your file explorer (Nautilus) to browse to your home folder and confirm.

Exec=env WINEPREFIX=/home/<USERNAME>/.wine-istaria /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java -jar launcher2.jar

Option B: Paste the following block to re-write the whole file from the terminal

cat << EOF > ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Istaria/Play\ Istaria.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Play Istaria
Exec=env WINEPREFIX=/home/$(whoami)/.wine-istaria /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java -jar launcher2.jar
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Path=/home/$(whoami)/.wine-istaria/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Istaria
Icon=F5BC_GameIcon.0
StartupWMClass=jlauncher.exe
EOF

6. You may need to log out, and log back in for the change to the desktop file to be recognised if the following command does not do the trick, but now run the following.

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Istaria

You should now be able to search for a desktop icon labeled "Play Istaria", pin it to the dock etc. in the normal way. If you just get a small window warning that you need to install Java 1.7.0, then you will need to log out and back in, as the updated .desktop file has not been picked up.

7. You can create a symbolic link in your home folder, so that the Istaria folder is more readily accessible if you need to look at chat logs, install mods, or manually tweak settings.

cd
ln -s .wine-istaria/drive_c/Program\ Files/Istaria .

Your setup is complete.
 

nVidia Performance

If you are running with an nVidia card, you will get a very significant performance boost by enabling the following environment variables:

__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATION=1
__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE=1
__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH=~/.nv/cache

To set these values, open the environment variables file and paste values above into the file.

sudo -H gedit /etc/environment

You will also need to make the shader cache folder so it matches the "__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH" environment variable.

mkdir ~/.nv/cache

These and other performance flags can be found here:


Wine HQ Listing

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=2696&iTestingId=33529


If you don't know your login or password, please send an email to [email protected],
along with possible email, login name or character names.

Helpdesk FAQ
Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted