I have notice the pinned tutorial for this is very out of date, overly complicated, and no longer works. After a VERY long time of smashing my head on the wall I have found a much simpler way of getting this to work.
This was done with Arch Linux but should work for other distros. Debian could have issues just because the wine package can sometimes be serveral versions behind release however none of this seems to be an issue with the wine version so it should work.
Step 1. Install freelancer
Installing the game is pretty easy, shouldn't need any explination. No need for any fancy commands or using win32. Just extract the iso file or whatever other way you have to get you the SETUP.EXE and run the below:
`wine SETUP.EXE`
Step 2. Download the latest Crossfire
This one is also pretty easy. In the past you needed to do /SILENT to get the installer to work correctly. This is no longer the case with the latest 2.0 version.
`wine Crossfire2setup.exe`
Step 3. Disable winegstreamer
So we need to do a little wine configuration here. Nothing major just a little thing to make the launcher not crash.
1. `winecfg`
2. A new window will open up then move to the libraries tab. Inside the "new override for library" type in "winegstreamer" then click the add button. You will see that appear in the list below "existing overrides" select winegstreamer and the click the edit button. Then just select the disable button and hit okay. The launcher should start without an error now.
Step 4. Install dependencies
Just a few winetrick things we need to install. Some may have an installer to click next through but most should just run in the background until they are finished.
`winetricks wmp9 amstream devenum quartz`
Step 5. Running game
So a few things to know when you run the game now.
1. Updates will work however they seem to have about 79 update files that never install so they will just attempt to install each time you run the game (you can just skip update checks but make sure to run updates once in a while if new updates are released).
2. For some reason the game will get stuck on a black screen at launch. I have been unable to find a way to fix this from happening however getting past it is very easy. Just spam the esc and enter buttons for a few seconds and boom, you should be at the main menu. Weird issue but it is a pretty easy fix.
And that should be it. You should now have everything running a lot easier than most other tutorials I have seen for this in the past.
