Command and Conquer 3 runs on Linux with Crossover Office and Wine. There are still a few flaws, however while they are distracting, they don't interfere with the gameplay in a significant way.
Fundamentally there are two main points that are being addressed. Firstly that this game is excellent and secondly that it runs on linux.
For people not familiar with the series, Command and Conquer 3 is the third installment in the classic Command and Conquer series, not counting Generals, Red Alert one and two or Renegade. At this point in the plot, NOD and GDI have been going at it for six decades and in the meantime, Tiberium has spread to most of the world. Many areas are completely uninhabitable while most are only barely habitable, you won't just keel over in an hour, it might take a day or more. These are the areas that Nod controls. GDI controls areas in Eastern Europe and North America, Blue Zones where the ecosystem is nearly tiberium free. Not is apparently not portrayed as just another strange cult, according to some reviews; but after playing the game, Kane is still totally out of it and impressively evil.
Ok, so various reviews in both magazines in websites have used words like "campy" to describe the cutscenes and "formulaic" to describe the gameplay. Well I will say this, after having played the game, I really liked it. Of course, I also enjoyed "Battle Engine Aquila", so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much. The story is riveting and the campaign mode is very fun. But really that goes without saying, it's been done to death in all the Gaming magazines and on most of the game review sites. The real question everyone's asking "How do I play it on Linux?".
It does work in Crossover Office however it will only install with version 6.0.1, not version 6.1.0. If you're using the loki installer, you can overwrite your installation of Crossover and overwrite it back to run. The rest of the problems can be fixed by following the instructions in the "Tips and Tricks" section. The link is listed in the Reference section. But for ease of use, I'll repeat them here...
1. Crack the game, the copy protection doesn't work. I'm not going to give instructions that could potentially be used to pirate software, sorry.
2. There's an archive on the tips and tricks site as well as links to two dlls. However if you're using version 6.1.0, these should already be included.
3. Make sure the VM is in Windows Xp mode.
However, there is one other thing. At this point in time, the shaders must be set on Low for everything, on wine or crossover or you'll experience nasty graphical glitches that render the game unplayable. Like having invisible units and buildings. Otherwise, the other graphic settings can be set as high as desired so the loss is not as noticeable as one might imagine, on Crossover however, as of 6.1.0 the games does intermittently lock on the High graphical settings. In addition, there are several points, such as mission 1 in the nod campaign and somewhat along on the GDI campaign where the game will crash outright with a Direct3D error. This issue doesn't occur on the latest nightly build, so it will be fixed in the next revision.
Wine is further along, but still requires some work to get playing. Or rather, they can render everything perfectly, in summary..
1. Crack the game
2. Edit the registry for Alsa and GLSL. The same instructions are included in the wine wiki.
3. The two dlls have to be downloaded and installed.
4. Disable all compositing.
5. Shader quality set to low.
It's mentioned the game slows down after changing graphics settings, however this does not occur in Crossover.
References
Tips and Tricks (Crossover)
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=2857;tips=1
Wine
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=7440
For people not familiar with the series, Command and Conquer 3 is the third installment in the classic Command and Conquer series, not counting Generals, Red Alert one and two or Renegade. At this point in the plot, NOD and GDI have been going at it for six decades and in the meantime, Tiberium has spread to most of the world. Many areas are completely uninhabitable while most are only barely habitable, you won't just keel over in an hour, it might take a day or more. These are the areas that Nod controls. GDI controls areas in Eastern Europe and North America, Blue Zones where the ecosystem is nearly tiberium free. Not is apparently not portrayed as just another strange cult, according to some reviews; but after playing the game, Kane is still totally out of it and impressively evil.
Ok, so various reviews in both magazines in websites have used words like "campy" to describe the cutscenes and "formulaic" to describe the gameplay. Well I will say this, after having played the game, I really liked it. Of course, I also enjoyed "Battle Engine Aquila", so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much. The story is riveting and the campaign mode is very fun. But really that goes without saying, it's been done to death in all the Gaming magazines and on most of the game review sites. The real question everyone's asking "How do I play it on Linux?".
It does work in Crossover Office however it will only install with version 6.0.1, not version 6.1.0. If you're using the loki installer, you can overwrite your installation of Crossover and overwrite it back to run. The rest of the problems can be fixed by following the instructions in the "Tips and Tricks" section. The link is listed in the Reference section. But for ease of use, I'll repeat them here...
1. Crack the game, the copy protection doesn't work. I'm not going to give instructions that could potentially be used to pirate software, sorry.
2. There's an archive on the tips and tricks site as well as links to two dlls. However if you're using version 6.1.0, these should already be included.
3. Make sure the VM is in Windows Xp mode.
However, there is one other thing. At this point in time, the shaders must be set on Low for everything, on wine or crossover or you'll experience nasty graphical glitches that render the game unplayable. Like having invisible units and buildings. Otherwise, the other graphic settings can be set as high as desired so the loss is not as noticeable as one might imagine, on Crossover however, as of 6.1.0 the games does intermittently lock on the High graphical settings. In addition, there are several points, such as mission 1 in the nod campaign and somewhat along on the GDI campaign where the game will crash outright with a Direct3D error. This issue doesn't occur on the latest nightly build, so it will be fixed in the next revision.
Wine is further along, but still requires some work to get playing. Or rather, they can render everything perfectly, in summary..
1. Crack the game
2. Edit the registry for Alsa and GLSL. The same instructions are included in the wine wiki.
3. The two dlls have to be downloaded and installed.
4. Disable all compositing.
5. Shader quality set to low.
It's mentioned the game slows down after changing graphics settings, however this does not occur in Crossover.
References
Tips and Tricks (Crossover)
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=2857;tips=1
Wine
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=7440