Get movies worky for the magnanimous glory of Rin

[leycec]

This open issue is intended to foster discussion around the currently broken state of both the original and Vita movies installed by this installer. Given that this has been an on-going issue for nearly a decade, I have no clear idea how we might resolve this – or whether this issue even is resolvable.

Nonetheless, there just might exist that perfect storm of Wine version, Windows version, LAVFilters version, winetricks "apps," and Lutris commands to enable this to happen. What say ye, fellow Linux beasts? Can we make this happen? Or would we rather admit sweet, shameful defeat and replay several hundred hours of movie-less Fate/stay night while silently hanging our heads in collective agony?

Our fate lies in your capable hands, Magus.

[gourrykun]

Hi,

Thanks for the installer.

I think that patches 1.0.0 (beta) fix most issues.
I manage to play UBW intro between days 3 and 4 ingame with these.

Slight changes were made during installation:

1. Set WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=d in my bashrc to prevent wine mess up with associations (should have no consequences but stating it for completeness)
2. Kept all default options from the installation script but changed to portable installation at some point
3. Dropped mpv.exe (latest build for win32 from sourceforge) in same folder
4. Added a small script to create symlinks to patche files to switch from v0.9.0 and v1.0.0 beta easily
5. In game, checked patches > movies > force movie playback using mpv

The end of the prologue is still fading to white and crash on my setup though.

[leycec]

Wowza! Thanks a metric ton for the detailed response. I'm currently at UBW Day 9 on my re-playthrough, but suspect I've got a save or two still pegged at UBW Day 3 to exhaustively test this with. These looks like the key takeaways:

3. Dropped mpv.exe (latest build for win32 from sourceforge) in same folder
4. In game, checked patches > movies > force movie playback using mpv

Given that, the following seems like our best route: ^{...get it, route? I'll show myself the door.}

1. Add a new automated install-time dependency on mpv.exe to our Lutris script.
2. Advise users in our Linux instructions to manually enable the mpv patch after successfully completing the Prologue.

This is still a bit non-ideal, but leagues ahead of the current non-worky situation. Thanks again, @gourrykun! You deserve all of Ilya's terrifying love.

[gourrykun]

You are welcome.

If you are going to change the installer, I'd suggest you to enhance the patch download step. Currently this step often fails due to disk quota exceeded. Tomorrow it may fail due to the file being taken down in the meantime.

1. A sha1 checksum verification would be nice to warn end-users that something went wrong.
2. An import patch files from disk option could be nice for people who can find their route (following you though that door) in the forum posts

Nevermind, after thinking twice, I think you do not have control over this part of the installation process.

Thanks for the hard work

[leycec]

Currently this step often fails due to disk quota exceeded.

Oh, boy. Welp, that's decidedly awful. As you suggest, this is sadly on the Beast's Lair. In other news, I'm terrifyingly busy at the moment but intend to fully refactor our Lutris script as above sometime... maybe next week. I have only one final question: "Do we still need LAVFilters?"

In theory, substituting mpv for LAVFilters should just work. It seems a bit senseless to fetch and install both if we only need mpv. If you have a spare moment, would you mind testing this sketchy hypothesis by uninstalling (or just rm -rf-ing) drive_c/Program Files/LAV Filters from your WINE Prefix and attempting to play movies in-game again?

If not, no worries. We're all here purely out of love for the medium! And the moe, of course. Let's never forget the moe.

[gourrykun]

Hi,

Renamed LAV Filters to something else and video (UBW end of Day 3) still plays.
No issue with playing movies from extra menu also.

It seems it should be safe to remove these filters. Keep in mind that end users will have to either select skip movie playback or select force playback with mpv but default game options will not be linux friendly.

Few notes for end users below:

• using CTRL to fast forward to start of video does not stop ingame sound when video starts (it is best to skip forward till few screens before start of video and finish step by step after that).
• one must ALT TAB to bring mpv to the front to see video once the sound starts
• Some graphical glitches may appear after playing movies from story or menu. Mostly screen flickering partially (left side when using 4:3 full screen, whole window when using 4:3 windowed mode). A reboot might be required to fix the issue till next movie is played. I currently have no clue regarding the underlying issue.

[leycec]

Brilliant. LAV Filters is right out, then. And no one shed a tear.

Your word is iron law, so I'll happily append your profuse notes to our FAQ as a new entry on movie playback. Default game options are already Linux-unfriendly, so I'm (mostly) fine with advising users to manually:

• Enable skip movie playback until Day 1 of the Fate route (i.e., the end of the Prologue).
• Enable force playback with mpv at Day 1 of the Fate route (i.e., the end of the Prologue).
• Immediately after movie playback begins, <Alt-Tab> to the new mpv window.
• Immediately after movie playback ends, save the game (e.g., to resolve graphical glitches).

Graphical glitches after playback sadden us all, but such is life in the Linux trenches. Thanks again for your voluminous volunteerism! If I could repay you in Internet karma, I gladly would. 🤑

[leycec]

Ilyasviel is most displeased – and we all have a good idea of what that entails, don't we? It means I got PTSD from those Bad Ends, bro. </collective_shudder>

This is an incremental status update, because it's been ageless aeons since we last did this. Sadly, little has changed. Development has been arduously slow both here and at The Beast's Lair. The core issue for us is that we're downstream of the Windows-specific Ultimate Edition installer. Until Quibi, uyjulian, and the other core developers stabilize the next official release, our hands are tied like a cuddly homunculus in the Einzbern Castle.

Now, I know what everyone's ruminating: "Can't we just support the unstable 1.0 beta on Linux already?" Nope, 'cause the beta's critically unstable. Like, not just a little unstable at the margins but dead broke to the core. Specifically, the unstable 1.0 beta broke critical functionality that works in the stable 0.9.1 release. As reported by NM64, the worst of the breakage appears to be:

The day 5 -> day 6 transition results in a crash (no known work-around currently other than downgrading to v0.9.1)

Hard crashes on day transitions are obviously unacceptable, so the beta is right out. That doesn't leave us with much, unfortunately. Feature creep, development overreach, and inadequate testing has thwarted the development team from publishing their next stable release. Meanwhile, all the beta really needed was a minor bugfix patch to resolve outstanding regressions – but core developers resisted doing that too. In short, I share NM64's seething discontent:

...what is preventing the development of what is nothing more than simply a bug-fix release of the existing 1.0 public beta without any new features or functionality and such in vein similar to LTS software releases commonly found in the Debian realm? And don't say "julian", because then I'd just ask what's stopping you from making such a bug-fix release on your own while julian continues on with his ever-lasting feature creep developments?

We'll continue to keep a rheumy eye on The Beast's Lair. If (...hopefully when) their next official stable release drops with no horrible breaking issues, we'll support that effort in an oh snap. Until then, we limp on with 0.9.1 and mostly broken videos.

[kaasknak]

Having read through an absolute pile of messages on the beast's lair I think it is safe to say we should still hold off on updating.

• The official installer doesn't work and they are recommending using the old one and patching manually
• unstable on AMD CPUs
• unstable on CPUs with more than eight threads
• gamebreaking bugs are still being found regularly

The good news is that these bugs are actually being fixed and I see a lot of progress happening but I think that updating now would move a lot of problems to this repo and these are problems we wouldn't be able to fix.