Two Worlds Epic Edition was released with support for Ubuntu 14.04 and later.
Unfortunately, that release does not run well (or at all) on modern Linux systems.

Ubuntu dropped a required library (libpng12) from their repository in version 18.04.
Additionally, the version of Wine (1.9.5 Staging) used to create GOG's official wrapper is significantly out of date.

As noted by shmerl in another thread, the game's cut-scene videos had to be re-encoded to work in GOG's Linux release. I'll cover that process as well.

The following should get you a well-running version on a newer Linux installation. I tested using Linux Mint 19.2 to stick with GOG's currently supported distribution (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS), so your mileage may vary with other distros, but the process will be similar.

Ensure you have the following installed before continuing:

• wine 32-bit (i386) -- tested here with wine-staging-i386:i386 5.0~rc2~bionic (WineHQ repo)
• winetricks
• libfreetype6:i386
• ffmpeg (to re-encode video)

The entire process will use terminal commands.
You should be comfortable with the command line before continuing.


INSTALLATION - Two Worlds Epic Edition


Overview

• Prepare Wine Prefix
• Install Required Winetricks
• Install Game
• Convert Video Files
• Create Run Script (OPTIONAL)
• Improve Graphics (OPTIONAL)


Tested Environment

Linux Mint 19.2
Wine Staging 5.0-rc2
winetricks 0.0+20180217-1
ffmpeg 3.4.6
GOG - Two Worlds 2.2.0.23 (Windows)


Assumptions

• Setup file downloaded to "$HOME/Downloads":
~/Downloads/setup_two_worlds_epic_edition_2.2.0.23.exe

• Installing to "$HOME/Games":
~/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition"


Prepare Wine Prefix

$ cd ~/Games
$ mkdir two-worlds-epic-edition
$ cd two-worlds-epic-edition
$ export WINEPREFIX=$PWD
$ export WINEARCH=win32
$ winecfg

Wine Configuration Window:

• Applications Tab -> Windows Version:
—— • Windows XP
• Libraries Tab -> New override for Library:
—— • Select x3daudio1_1 from the dropdown.
—— • Click "Add" button.
—— • This adds "x3daudio1_1 (native, builtin)" to the list.
• Desktop Integration Tab -> Folders:
—— • Uncheck "Link to" for each folder (OPTIONAL)
• Click "OK" button to apply and close the window.


Install Required Winetricks

$ winetricks devenum quartz wmp9 xact


Install Game

$ wine ~/Downloads/setup_two_worlds_epic_edition_2.2.0.23.exe

• When it asks to install PhysX, do so.
• The GOG installer will encounter a Runtime Error after installation.
—— • It's normal, just click "OK".
• Click "Exit" when the installation is complete. (NOT Launch!)


Convert Video Files

The game videos and cut-scenes use the "vc1" video format, which is not supported in wine.
The following will re-encode the videos using "wmv2".

$ cd ~/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition
$ cd "drive_c/GOG Games/Two Worlds Epic Edition"
$ mv Video Video.bak
$ mkdir Video
$ cd Video.bak
$ for i in *.wmv; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -q:a 0 -q:v 0 -vcodec wmv2 -acodec wmav2 "../Video/$i"; done
$ for i in *.abc; do cp "$i" "../Video/$i"; done


Create Run Script (OPTIONAL)

A run script makes it easier to start the game and create menu shortcuts.

Use any plain text editor to edit the file -- here I'm using vim.

$ cd ~/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition
$ touch start.sh
$ chmod 755 start.sh
$ vim start.sh

File Contents:

#!/bin/bash
export WINEPREFIX=$(realpath $(dirname $0))
export WINEARCH=win32
echo "WINEPREFIX: $WINEPREFIX"
echo "WINEARCH: $WINEARCH"
cd "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/GOG Games/Two Worlds Epic Edition"
echo "Working Directory: $PWD"
echo "Running TwoWorlds.exe"
WINEDEBUG=fixme-all wine TwoWorlds.exe

The game can now be run with: ./start.sh


Improve Graphics (OPTIONAL)

The following creates a file that can be loaded in-game to enhance the graphics on modern systems. It increases draw distances, eliminates fog (which can cause render problems), and increases the field of view.

Use any plain text editor to edit the file -- here I'm using vim.

Note: This file must exist BEFORE the game is started.

$ cd ~/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition
$ cd "drive_c/GOG Games/Two Worlds Epic Edition"
$ touch _
$ vim _

File Contents:

Engine.TShadows 1
Engine.Shadows 1
Engine.UseStencilShadows 1
Engine.TrueWaterRef 1
Engine.WaterReflections 1
Engine.Farplane 2500
Engine.GFadeFar 2000
Engine.GFadeNear 500
Engine.LOD1 2000
Engine.LOD0 1000
Engine.AlphaFadeFar 10000
Engine.AlphaFadeNear 1000
Engine.SetFogParams 100 1000 0.2 0.02 0
Engine.FOV 80
Engine.FOVUpdate

The last two "FOV" lines are optional.
They allow for a more zoomed out experience on larger screens.

To load the graphics update:

• Start or Load a game.
• Press the tilde key "~" in-game to bring up a console.
• Type "@_" (without quotes) and hit Enter.
• Bring the console up again with the tilde "~" key.
• Press the up arrow to bring up the last command and press Enter again.

The command must be run twice to properly update the scene!

Unfortunately, this hack must be done manually every time the game is started.
It must be done within the game world, NOT on the intro screen.

Thanks for posting this. I'm on Ubuntu Bionic and the game is working great except for one issue. If I alt-tab out of the game and then switch back to it, mouse clicks no longer work. I've tried full screen and windowed (with a virtual desktop in winecfg) and it's the same issue for both settings. Not really sure what else to try.

Glad the post helped to get you rolling =)

I don't believe I encountered the alt-tab mouse issue with Two Worlds, but it's a common issue -- I'm experiencing it with Astrox Imperium at the moment. I haven't come across a bullet proof solution, as it really depends on the underlying cause, and often I don't find a solution at all (short of never tabbing out).

Occasionally it's as simple as the Alt and/or Tab keys getting stuck in a registered down state, and pressing each key individually once you return to the game will un-stick them.

Other times it's a matter of not being able to re-capture the cursor. Sometimes that's due to the application not watching for and realizing the cursor lock was lost, so it never tries to re-obtain the lock. When that's the case I've sometimes had luck running the game under it's own X instance -- then I switch X sessions instead of Alt-Tabbing out.

Conversely, other times the cursor lock is on a greedy loop and refuses to release at all. In such cases your window manager may have a way to force the release, but then the game can't re-coordinate the mouse once you return to the game -- e.g. if it incorrectly assumes a locked center-screen position then all relative movements are off. Along these lines, any game that changes your screen resolution (or does so virtually via emulation... like DOSBox) will often lose mouse functionality upon return due to the tracked coordinate falling outside the screen boundary. I haven't had any luck fixing these kind of issues.

This comment probably won't directly fix your issue, but hopefully it provides some outside-the-box avenues to further your thought process.

Please do post back if you find a solution =)

I think this game should lose the linux compatible tag on the store tbh

Wine, like all software packages, assumes a certain set of available system libraries, but mainly those libs remain available for legacy purposes. It's certainly possible to still run Wine 1.95 on modern systems, but my note about it being "significantly out of date" was a polite way of saying I'm not even going to bother telling you to install less performant legacy software. Ubuntu 16.04 still works because libpng12 wasn't removed until 18.04. If, however, you do have the shared lib available on your system, you may just need to export LD_LIBRARY_PATH with the path to its parent directory. The failing out could come from a number of sources. Might just be crashing out when it tries to play the entry video if you didn't re-encode them and don't have any requisite codecs. I'd recommend opening up Start.sh and enable logging (i.e. get rid of things like WINEDEBUG=-all). Can't really tell you much more without logs. Sure, there are a pretty good number of gameson GOG (and a ton of them on Steam) that claim Linux compatibility based on pre-built wine wrappers -- and sensibly so. While it's debatable whether devs releasing new titles should make Linux a first-class citizen, older titles don't have that option. Most of their teams are long since gone and rebuilding them simply isn't an option. As long as the build's reasonably tested, in many cases Wine allows a performant quick-port option to make a game available to a wider audience.

I see no ethical difference between that option and, say, a DOSBox-wrapped release of Wing Commander: Privateer.

Basically, they pre-package Wine wrappers so people like me don't have to write posts like these :)

Hi, I'm trying to get Two Worlds running in Wine; however I have the Zoom Platform version, rather than the GOG version. The game seems to load up and the graphics seem fine, but I am not able to get any sound. I saw this thread and I know it's not the GOG version, but I would think they are probably fairly similar and I'm wondering if you have any suggestions?

I am using Wine 6.15 in Arch Linux. I have followed your guide, except that I haven't re-encoded the videos and for some reason I can't get wmp9 to install with this version of Wine. So, instead I have tried wmp10 and wmp11, but I can't get any sound with either. The lack of videos doesn't prevent the game from loading up and it seems unlikely it would cause a problem with the in-game sound.

The issue seems to be related to the X3DAudio1_1.dll that is being used. When I run the game, I get some errors in the terminal that seem to relate to it:

0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateInMemoryWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateInMemoryWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateStreamingWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateStreamingWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateSoundBank Failed to CreateSoundBank: -2

Do you have any idea why I might be getting these errors? Have you or anybody else tried running the game with wmp10/11 with any success?

Thanks in advance!

Can't say I've tried to install wmp9 lately, but it's still available in winetricks and I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work in the latest Wine -- but I can tell you from previous experience that wmp10/11 is NOT a substitute for 9 -- I don't recall if they're just missing some codecs or what, but a number of games I've experimented with in the past lose audio without wmp9.

Those are xact lib-related errors, though -- I've mostly seen that particular one happen when you're using Lutris and don't disable their runtime -- just hit it last week as a matter of fact on Supreme Commander.

Also I presume you followed the Wine config notes to override that dll?

• Libraries Tab -> New override for Library:
—— • Select x3daudio1_1 from the dropdown.
—— • Click "Add" button.
—— • This adds "x3daudio1_1 (native, builtin)" to the list.

Hi and thanks for your reply. It sounds like the issue is that it needs wmp9; however, I cannot get it to install in a 32-bit prefix with the latest Wine version. When I try to install, I get an error saying it can only be installed on Windows XP/2000 etc., even though I have the version compatibility set to XP in winecfg.

As far as I can tell, it seems to be a bug in recent versions of Wine. I will submit a bug report to them and perhaps try my luck with an older Wine version.

Yes, I have set up the native dll override for x3daudio1_1.dll. I suspect the problem is the lack of wmp9, so I'll have to pursue how to get that installed.

Although, that's an interesting point that it could be a codec issue with wmp10/11. I mean, the GOG/Zoom versions of the game supposedly run on newer versions of Windows, which I doubt would still be running wmp9. So, there must be some way to get the game running with wmp10/11.

Update: I have managed to install wmp9 (using instructions given here); however, the sound still isn't working. I have also re-encoded the videos and those still don't seem to work (I assume there should be some sort of intro video at the start of the game?).

One thing I realized is that the Zoom Platform version seems to be 1.1, which is out of date. I have installed the patches available on ModDB to get it up to 1.7, but still no luck with the sound.

There are reports on the appDB of v1.7 working in super-old versions of Wine (1.3.18) and some people saying they had to change audio settings like sample rate (not sure how to even do that in current Wine versions) or copy XACT files into the top-level game folder.

I might try an older version of Wine and see if that helps. You say it ran ok with Wine Staging 5.0 in your OP?

Update 2: I installed a bunch of other Windows components, including directshow, directplay, directmusic and now the movies play. So one of those must be required for the videos. Still no sound though, in either the videos or game.

Hey, that's a useful thread link. Thanks for including that :)

Out of curiosity, do you have all the standard libgstreamer codec libs installed?
Also, I assume you just installed wmp9, not also 10/11, right?

I certainly didn't have to change Wine's audio sample rate, but I remember there used to be a DirectSound reg key to do so. Haven't used it in so long I can't say if that's still the way or not.

You don't usually have to move DLLs around unless the base executable isn't properly searching their remote directory (usually a problem with Mono), in which case I'd most often recommend symlinking instead of moving them.

Yep, that was latest at the time. While it can be useful to keep older versions around to support existing installations, I admit I usually just use latest, and then roll back to a specific version if I run into major issues for a particularly important title.

It's possible that the dependency list has changed on xact or wmp9, and directshow is often required to get video working in a number of titles. Good on you for guessing and experimenting well :)

Still no audio, though, huh? I'll stand by my gstreamer question on that one for now.
Though if you successfully re-encoded the videos with ffmpeg as described, you must have wmav2 codec compatibility lying around somewhere.

Are you able to play the video files (outside the game) with sound?

Any newly associated log errors?

Hello everyone and thank you xixas for this procedure

I'm running freshly installed Ubuntu 22.04.
I tested the installation in GOG Linux version, but nothing, still nothing found to make it work.
I also tested Lutris, but nothing.

I just did your procedure. I was careful not to miss anything, at least until

The game launches and like Time4Tea, I have no sound, but also I have no video (no start scene).

~/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition$ ./start.sh
WINEPREFIX: /home/me/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition
WINEARCH: win32
Working Directory: /home/me/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition/drive_c/GOG Games/Two Worlds Epic Edition
Running TwoWorlds.exe
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateInMemoryWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateInMemoryWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateStreamingWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateStreamingWaveBank Failed to CreateWaveBank: -2
0024:err:xact3:IXACT3EngineImpl_CreateSoundBank Failed to CreateSoundBank: -2


Under winecfg, I see:
Applications: Default settings and MPSetup.exe, after installing it Wintricks life
Libraries: x3daudio1_1 present, but also a whole other bunch including wmplayer, d3dx9 24 to 43, d3d10core, d3d11, jscript etc.

No sounds or videos.

I confirm that the videos are well readable from Ubuntu.
Since wintricks I start the explorer and I read Cut1.wmv (for example) with WindowsMedia Player 9.

However, I note that my installation is this under /home/me/Games/two-worlds-epic-edition/drive_c/GOG Games/Two Worlds Epic Edition:

/Video: Credits .wmv
Cut1-3-5-6-7-8 .wmv
Intro2-3-5 .wmv
/Video.bak: Credits.wmv
Cut1-3-5-6-7-8 .wmv & .abc except for 7
Intro2-3-5 .wmv & .abc except for 2 and 3
/Video.bak/Video: same as /Video.bak

Thank you for your help, for this game which seems really great to me... ;-)

Hi Calypsoh,

FYI: I have identified a solution for those xact errors. I installed xact using winetricks and then I had to manually add the override: xactengine2_7 . This is required for the in-game sound to work, but for some reason winetricks doesn't add the override automatically (probably a bug).

I have however still been having issues with getting the videos to play. It seems that wmp9 has recently become more difficult to install in Wine, which is annoying.

I managed to get wmp9 to install in the 32-bit prefix, but the videos still won't play, even after re-encoding to wmv2 and with wmp9, quartz installed. I will make a new test report in the Wine AppDB.