Oldie but goldie: Medal Of Honor Allied Assault mostly working on Steam Deck

[krizzle]

Steam Deck is an awesome nostalgia machine, but running an old favorite of mine - Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault[www.gog.com] - took some tinkering. For the three of you out there that might want to play it too, here's what I've learned.

TL;DR: I got it working only in Desktop Mode, but am hitting trouble with a static splash screen when launched from within Gaming Mode. Maybe some of y'all would have an idea

Steps I took:
1. Get MOHAA: War Chest installed via the GOG store using Heroic.
I followed this guide[www.dexerto.com] to get Heroic on the Deck, bought the game via GOG, and downloaded it to the Deck.

2. Add MOHAA.exe to Steam as a non-steam game
Still in Desktop mode. Heroic installs the game to the followin directory: "/home/deck/Games/Heroic/Medal of Honor - Allied Assault War Chest/" where you'll find MOHAA.exe. At the bottom left of the Steam window, you can "ADD A GAME", then "Add a non-Steam game", then browse for MOHAA.exe to add it. Note: you'll need to change File Type to All Files to see MOHAA.exe.

3. Configure Proton for MOHAA.exe
Right-click on the freshly-appeared game in your library and select Properties. Under Compatibility, Proton Experimental and Proton 7.0-3 worked fine for me. However, the game would launch to a gray frozen screen unless I did the following: under Shortcut, edit the LAUNCH OPTIONS to be:

MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR=2002 %command%

This allowed the game to finally launch correctly!

The Shortcut panel is also a great place to rename the game to "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" and add a seperately-downloaded icon for usability.

4. Configure game for proper video settings.
The first time you launch the game in Desktop mode, you'll likely see it taking a small chunk of the screen as if windowed. But the important part is: it launched! Now there's a file you must configure, but it only works after a successful first launch. Quit the game gracefully using the in-game Quit button. Now, navigate in the Dolphin file explorer to:

/home/deck/Games/Heroic/Medal of Honor - Allied Assault War Chest/main/configs

and open unnamedsoldier.cfg with the KWrite text editor.
Add the following lines (or edit them if they already exist):

seta r_customheight "800"
seta r_customwidth "1280"
seta r_mode "-1"

(the last two existed in the file already for me with different values, so I simply edited them).

Now your game should launch in full screen in desktop mode! For me, each time I launch the game this way, it starts out minimized or otherwise not in focus. I must use the mouse to bring it to the foreground from the task bar. But then, I can play it fine!

Note, sometimes things go wrong and a prompt comes up asking if you'd like to run the game in Safe Mode. This blows away the config in step #4 above, so you may need to redo it.

5. Configure controls.
Unlike in gaming mode, desktop mode doesn't give a nice overlay when hitting the Steam button to edit your controls live. I had to do so ahead of time by hitting the Controller Layout button below Steam's Play button. From there, I was able to select the Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse template in the clunky controller configurator UI, and was able to set up gyro aiming as well.

Within the game, you can use the trackpad mouse to then configure all the other sound and graphics and advanced settings. Runs fine at 60Hz as I'd expect an id Tech 3 game from 2002 to do on the Deck.

Next steps
To play the Spearhead and Breakthrough expansions, these steps must be repeated for the moh_spearhead.exe and moh_breakthrough.exe executables as well. I've not yet done so, but googling around points to their independent .cfg files that may require the same video touch-ups.

I would love any thoughts on how to get it running from within Gaming Mode on the Deck. What happens in gaming mode is a splash texture dominates the screen at launch and doesn't go away. I can tell and hear the game is running below it, but some weird windowing issue prevents it from showing the intro video and main menu screen. Until I figure that out, I'll keep launching from Desktop mode I suppose!

[WithoutRuth]

Thanks for sharing this, was just considering trying to check this out on deck soon.

[Falkentyne]

Yikes...you talking about this old game from 2002(?) that came out before the company "2015" rebranded as Infinity Ward, who then made Call of Duty? Had some fun times with the low framerates on this game way back. Pushed my Pentium 3 to its knees.

I remember seeing them at E3 back when they were still 2015 and they were promoting some Vietnam game (Men of Valor? Men of war? I forgot).

At least COD Fixed the broken OP shotguns in this game and the ability to run while leaning...

[OGNocturnal]

I think it could be an OpenGL issue. Have you checked all proton versions in gaming mode? Maybe running it under wineD3D would yield results?

Try this in the launch options in the properties page.

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

[krizzle]

Thanks for the suggestion, but adding PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 did not work. It's an OpenGL-based game as is, not D3D/DX.

Funny, launching the game from Heroic game launcher leads to the same issue as from the Deck's Gaming Mode... splash screen stuck on. I also tried playing with Wine's Graphics settings from within Heroic as shown here[www.fosslicious.com] but this didn't help.

I'll keep fiddling. Game is playable in Desktop mode, just not from Gaming Mode nor Heroic launcher.

[krizzle]

OK, I finally got it working from within Steam Deck's gaming mode, all fullscreen like! Required blowing away everything done above, so I uninstalled MOHAA from within Heroic first.

It's involved. You need to enable a root password, writeable filesystem, and install some utilities missing from SteamOS... so you stray from the out-of-box SteamOS experience and might run into trouble later. Comfort with operating Linux is a plus.

So if launching it from desktop mode all simple-like isn't a problem for you, ignore the below. But here's how I achieved launch from Gaming mode.

1. Download raw installers from GOG
In your library on gog.com, instead of hitting the "Download and Install Now" button, right below it you can "Download offline backup game installers". Download all 3x files to, say, ~/Games/MOHAA.

This should download these three files:
setup_medal_of_honor_2.0.0.21-1.bin
setup_medal_of_honor_2.0.0.21-2.bin
setup_medal_of_honor_2.0.0.21.exe

2. Run the wine wrapper for MOHAA
Download This dude's wrapper from GOG community discussions[www.gog.com]. Extract the archive to the same folder where the 3x downloaded files are, e.g. ~/Games/MOHAA.

3. Install the icoutils package
This is needed by the mohaa_wine.sh wrapper script from page 2.

By default, the root deck account on Steam Deck does not have a password and will need one for this. Launch Konsole from Desktop mode, type "passwd" and give a password of your choice (I'm not happy with this step... later on I might need to delete the password to go back to a vanilla Steam Deck experience).

This allows you to run commands as root, using sudo.

Next, you'll need enable the file system for write by running this in the Konsole:

sudo steamos-readonly disable

It'll prompt you to enter the password from the step above.

Now you'll need to initialize pacman[steamdecktips.com], the package manager for archlinux OSs such as SteamOS. In Konsole:

sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux
sudo pacman -Syu

Finally you can now install the icon utilities:

sudo pacman -S icoutils

4. Run the mohaa_wine.sh script
From within Konsole, change to the directory where mohaa_wine.sh and the 3x install files are, e.g.

cd ~/Games/MOHAA

then run the script!

./mohaa_wine.sh

... it'll take a while, but will get installed.

5. Add start.sh to Steam
From here on out, add the ~/Games/MOHAA/Medal of Honor - Allied Assault War Chest/start.sh script as a non-Steam game as in step #2 in the original post on this thread. You can use the shortcut menu to edit the name and add icons.

... And that's it! Easy, right? Next level would be to understand what it is about the mohaa_wine.sh script that configures Wine to run with proper windowing modes. But that's for a later, more motivated time.

[OGNocturnal]

Originally posted by krizzle:

Thanks for the suggestion, but adding PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 did not work. It's an OpenGL-based game as is, not D3D/DX.

Oh right i don't have the title on PC, only console, so couldn't delve into it as much as i wanted to.
I'm glad you got it working though, i've been watching this thread for ages intrigued. Great write up

[The Virtual Resistance]

Originally posted by krizzle:

From here on out, add the ~/Games/MOHAA/Medal of Honor - Allied Assault War Chest/start.sh script as a non-Steam game as in step #2 in the original post on this thread. You can use the shortcut menu to edit the name and add icons.

... And that's it! Easy, right? Next level would be to understand what it is about the mohaa_wine.sh script that configures Wine to run with proper windowing modes. But that's for a later, more motivated time.

I got everything but the add shortcut to steam. The .sh files are not launchable from steam, or....did you make the shortcut from the script itself? Mine just gives me an image shortcut.
EDIT: Nvm. I was "adding steam shortcut" but followed the process you mentioned on OG step #2. It works ! Thanks! I will make a gameplay video soon and give you credit and reference this post.

[Wolf]

I’ve found a way to get it running within game mode without all the extra steps, so only thing that’s required are the first steps mentioned in the initial post.

Trying to get American McGee’s Alice to run, which runs on idtech3 as well, I’ve found a post that mentioned pressing Alt+Enter to get the zoomed-in and flipped menu screen to work properly. Since Alt+Enter is historically a fullscreen toggle and the game uses pretty much the same engine core, I figured I’d try.

So all you need to do is bind a controller button to ‘Alt’ as main command and ‘Enter’ as sub command. Now start the game from the Deck’s game mode, you’ll get usual stuck on grey splash screen issue. Now just press your Alt-Enter button (after you’ve skipped the intro clips you can’t see because of the grey screen), the screen will flicker a little and you’ll be in the main menu! From there on it seems like smooth sailing. Only graphical issue I see so far is that the skybox borders are visually shown (clearly noticeable dark grey outline).

Unfortunately I’ve just noticed now that this way the audio doesn’t seem to work at all… bummer. Maybe you’ve got some better luck though.

EDIT:
So installing the game through Lutris and starting it’s shortcut from game mode and pressing Alt+Enter should be the easiest way that works for me, sound issue is fixed for me this way. The downside to that solution is now you can’t use game scope to cap framerate (it will simply not do anything), so the game will run at max FPS which seems to be around 90 for me.

EDIT 2:
Trying Spearhead and Breakthrough by duplication the configuration Lutris creates for the whole War Chest and changing the executable. Spearhead works just as well as the base game. Unfortunately Breakthrough doesn’t budge at all by pressing Alt+Enter for some reason, so that’s still the one thing left that seems to only work in desktop mode.

[Blitzy]

Originally posted by Wolf:

I’ve found a way to get it running within game mode without all the extra steps, so only thing that’s required are the first steps mentioned in the initial post...

This is fantastic, i just tried this out in gaming mode with the Lutris install of MOHAA War Chest and it works great for the base game.

As for the 90 fps issue, I wonder if using the com_maxfps command would work in this case. I havent tried it yet, but theoretically you could create an autoexec.cfg and set com_maxfps to 60 or whatever you want. Reference: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Medal_of_Honor:_Allied_Assault#Increasing_frame_limit

EDIT: Just tried the com_maxfps command and it does seem to limit the fps, if a little strangely. Game scope is reporting 62-63 fps when i set com_maxfps to 60.

EDIT 2: The game does cause Steam Deck to use an usually high amount of power though. I used the TDP limiter in the Quick Access menu to drop it down to 3 watts (minimum) it still seems to run at a solid 60 fps while only consuming 7-8.5 watts per hour.

[Wolf]

Great, now that's solved, too! Only issue remaining is Breakthrough...

[Blitzy]

Originally posted by Wolf:

Great, now that's solved, too! Only issue remaining is Breakthrough...

Ok so I got Breakthrough to load and play in gaming mode. I was having color depth issue with all three games, where in darker areas typically in shadow would get a tremendous amount of color banding. It looked almost like the bit depth was low like 8 / 16 bit. My fix for the color depth problem was changing the Wine executable that is used for the game in the Lutris configure window from the Lutris Wine (7.2.2) to the System Wine (7.0). Doing this solved the color depth problem AS WELL as the Alt+Enter problem we were having earlier in this thread. I tested all three games running in this version of Wine and they all load up and play.

[Wolf]

Awesome, thanks a lot for letting us know!

[Turbo]

MOHAA is garbage. Enemy has 100% accuracy. AI team members are only good at getting you and them killed.

[krizzle]

“Damn good stuff, sir.” Glad you came to share the Alt+Enter trick.

Turbo, I agree MOHAA is quite dated and doesn’t compare to modern games. But back in the early 2000s this was a great experience. Played it for nostalgia reasons, and won’t be doing it again I reckon.

While we’re at it.. HL1 and its garbage ladder climbing dynamics drove me nuts on a recent nostalgia play-through. Had to switch to the Black Mesa mod to keep myself from pulling hair out.

[Turbo]

I remember playing MOHAA when it came out and don't recall it sucking like this. I guess it was a new genre at the time that made it interesting.

Many games have crappy ladder mechanics