I wrote these notes on post-installation procedures because I considered they are lacking in the numerous existing tutorials. At some point most of the installation tutorials, aware of their doubtful legality, start to get obscure, and say something like: now you fetch the cracked TS3.exe and TSLHost.dll from you-know-where and replace your original files with them, and you are done. I post them here with a hope that somebody else might find them useful (or that I might need to reinstall it a few months from now).
1) I am running Ubuntu on an Intel Core i3 processor with integrated graphics (Intel HD 2500). Sims 3 is using something called S3TC texture compression, which is a patented technology and is absent in the open source driver for Intel graphics. This results in some missing textures and illegible black blocky hieroglyphics in place where the text should appear.
Luckiky, there is a workaround. A S3TC decoding library called libtxc-dxtn can be installed and plugged into the Intel graphics driver, see http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=16664#Comment-78191
On Ubuntu: search for libtxc-dxtn in Software Center (or sudo apt-get install libtxc-dxtn in a Terminal)
On Fedora: add RPMFusion's repo and install libtxc_dxtn.
On a 64-bit machine you should nevertheless install the 32-bit versions too.
2) My version of Sims 3 is 1.0.631.00002, while the no-CD crack I have found is for version 1.19.44. Therefore I need to get the upgrate patches. I downloaded patch files from EA website using wget from the command line, e.g.:
$ wget http://akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.6.6.002002_from_1.0.631.00002.exe
There are probably several possible sequences of patches; the one I used was:
Sims3_1.6.6.002002_from_1.0.631.00002.exe
Sims3_1.11.7.005002_from_1.6.6.002002.exe
Sims3_1.12.70.006002_from_1.11.7.005002.exe
Sims3_1.14.11.007002_from_1.12.70.006002.exe
Sims3_1.15.34.008002_from_1.14.11.007002.exe
Sims3_1.17.60.009002_from_1.15.34.008002.exe
Sims3_1.18.9.009002_from_1.17.60.009002.exe
Sims3_1.19.44.010002_from_1.18.9.009002.exe
The last few digits seem to designate the region. ...002 was OK for me (I purchased my DVD in the EU); North America apparently requires ...001, and so on. Patces for different regions do not mix; you need to get a sequence of patches for your own region.
3) Next I installed the patches in the correct order, starting with:
$ WINEPREFIX="/home/USER/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/TheSims3/" wine /home/USER/Downloads/Sims3_1.6.6.002002_from_1.0.631.00002.exe
and proceeding through the sequence (please replace USER with your actual username). If I attempt to run the game at this stage, I get the notice that the game DVD is not present in the drive (even though it is).
4) This is the step I don’t like. In order to circumvent the over-eager Electronic Arts copy protection, I need to partly replace my legally obtained files (namely, the files TS3.exe and TSLHost.dll in the directory listed below) with their cracked counterparts which don’t check for the disc in the drive.
~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/TheSims3/drive_c/Program\\ Files/Electronic\\ Arts/The\\ Sims\\ 3/Game/Bin/
I may well be consciously installing some malware at this point. For the record, the MD5 checksums and file lengths for them are:
1808ff77817766136b46af82833c73e3 12272912 TS3.exe
0e8af3a72411fc263bfb4d2ac130dd71 4867344 TSLHost.dll
I will feel much better when Wine will be able to detect the disk, and apparently this is being worked on: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26273
I am ready to run the game now:
$ WINEPREFIX="/home/USER/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/TheSims3/" TZ="America/Halifax" wine /home/USER/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/TheSims3/drive_c/Program\\ Files/Electronic\\ Arts/The\\ Sims\\ 3/Game/Bin/TS3.exe
Setting the timezone is supposedly needed in order to circumvent a bug in Mono. Some suggest changing it to "America/Bahia"; this didn't work for me.
Thank you for reading and I am open to suggestions.
Primoz
