Need for Speed™ Carbon on Arch using WineGUI

03-07-24 12:48 simon

It's 2024 and I still like Need for Speed™ Carbon.

It has been around a long time and I have played newer versions but this still is the one I enjoy most.

Back when it was released I had to run it on Windows, Linux could not emulate the environment needed for games. Today 99% of my games are in Steam. NFS Carbon is not available in Steam, if it was, I would just have bought it again.

So, to get this running on Arch Linux. I am not a Wine guru, so I installed WineGUI from the AUR.

I chose Windows 7 (seems a good fit) and of course 32 bit. These are the settings I used WineGUI

I decided to create an ISO image, in case I needed it to run the game all the time. To get the info to do this I ran

isoinfo -d -i /dev/cdrom | grep -i -E 'block size|volume size'

This gives the values needed to create the ISO with

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=NFSC.iso bs=2048 count=1878560

I then put the disc away and copied the game key into Keepass for easy reference.

I mounted the ISO to /mnt

sudo mkdir /mnt/NFS
sudo mount -o loop NFSC.iso /mnt/NFS/

This shows up in WineGUI as drive d:

I completed the install as though in Windows, skipping the registration as the EA server is no longer there.

I did copy a no CD application so I would not need the ISO mounted all the time. I removed the mount with

sudo umount /mnt/NFS 
sudo rmdir /mnt/NFS/

Then to create a launcher. Name

Need for Speed™ Carbon

Command

env WINEPREFIX="/home/simon/.local/share/winegui/prefixes/NFS Carbon" wine "/home/simon/.local/share/winegui/prefixes/NFS Carbon/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/Need for Speed Carbon/NFSC.exe"

Working Directory

/home/simon/.local/share/winegui/prefixes/NFS Carbon/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/Need for Speed Carbon

You will need to change these to suit your setup, but you get the idea. Add the icon as shown

Screenshot_2024-07-03_12-12-15

Mark the launcher executable, and off we go! All movies work, sound works and most importantly the USB controller works!

Done! nfscrunning Happily playing Need for Speed™ Carbon in 2024!