Posted March 19, 2019
neonbible: ...lots of .txt files can't be found from the vdata/system folder e.g. Histories001.txt ... Anything to worry about here?
Sorry for the delayed response. It's been well over a year since I played VtMB now, but if I recall correctly, all the necessary histories info is stored in histories000.txt. That's where I've always made my manual class edits. It's possible the load scripts are just checking for additional files.
Having said that, you'd be better off asking about it in a modding thread, as those guys understand the file structure better than myself. I just specialize in making broken things run ;)
The intro videos seem to be hit and miss between systems and video cards. Wine has come a long way since I did this writeup, so you might have better luck with a newer engine.
Newer Wine Tech Notes (Rant)
The official Wineskin (by doh123) has kinda fallen out of support, but over on GitHub, Gcenx has been maintaining an updated version of doh123's code known as "Unofficial Wineskin Winery"—the binaries are available under the Release section of his WineskinServer project. A lot of people seem to be happy with it, but I haven't tried it yet myself.
See Gcenx's comments here and here later in this thread for a correction to my earlier version of this post.
Then there's PortingKit (probably the most popular option these days). VitorMM, who maintains the PortingKit project, has made a lot of improvements to Wineskin—which acts as the base for for PortingKit—and has merged in Gcenx's code with support for wine engines up to at least 4.3 (you can get newer engines when you create new custom wrappers in PortingKit).
Unless you want to get into the code, I'd recommend just keeping PortingKit up-to-date and creating custom wrappers there.
Edit:
To be more specific, if you want to upgrade your existing installation with a new Wine engine, you can create a new custom wrapper from the "File" > "New Custom Port" menu in PortingKit. Name it something obvious like "TEST.app". Select the engine you want and allow it to download the engine. Then, when it asks for an installer executable just cancel out and delete the partial wrapper that was created. Then, on your existing VtMB app:
• Right-click the app file
• Select "Show Package Contents"
• Run Wineskin.app
• Select "Advanced"
• Select the "Tools" tab
• Click "Change Engine Used"
• Select the new engine—e.g. "WS9Wine4.3-2"
• Click OK—After a few seconds you'll be back in the "Tools" window
• Click "Test Run" to see if it's running OK
• You can repeat the process to test as many engines as you like or return to your original engine.
Post edited March 30, 2019 by xixas