No text whatsoever - Ubuntu - Steam

[Socrates1984]

Hello to all the good people of this community!

After a few failed attempts to come to peace with my Windows 7 OS (and for various other -non-related to this thread- reasons) I migrated to Ubuntu. The only problem would be a risk to not be able to play my favorite game, but after a diligent effort I found out the way to play it natively. Sort of...

It wasn't so hard after all. I installed Ubuntu (16.04 LTS) alongside Windows. I installed the Linux version of Steam. I bought the Linux version of Medieval 2 Total War and Kingdoms. It required a week of trial and error, reading through Ubuntu and Steam forums and tweaking to finally launch the game successfully. (This full week doesn't imply that the process is difficult, but rather that I am not very good at this.)

Anyway, the game launched. The problem, as the thread's title says, is that there is no text whatsoever. I mean, absolutely nothing, nowhere. What I have done to solve this, you can see in the following list:

1. Launched a campaign. Good. Everything works fine, except -you guessed it- no text.
2. Played a custom battle. See above.
3. Tried 1 and 2 with all four Kingdoms. Same as above.
4. I read somewhere that it is probably a font problem. Something with the Tahoma font. So, I downloaded it, with the usual due diligence (rebuilding the fonts, rebooting etc), and tried all the above (1-3). The problem persists.
5. I rebooted again and tried all the above (1-3). The problem persists.
6. I read somewhere else that you have to unpack the .pack files using the unpacker in the /pack folder. I would try this solution, but the unpacker is missing.

So, I have three questions:

1. Where is the unpacker? Shouldn't it be there, since I downloaded from Steam and verified the cache? Where can I find the unpacker?
2. Is the above line of action the solution to the problem? Is there any other solution that you know of?
3. What is the meaning of life? Is fear of death the true cause for our actions?

Any help, hints or directions would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!



P.S.: No text nowhere is meant literally. Menus, unit cards, strat map, cities, buildings, splash screen, loading screens, start menu, submenus.
P.S.S.: I installed Wine and WineTricks in order to install and play Third Age TW and DaC in the near future. I don't think it is related to this thread, but for completeness sake. I didn't use it at all in the above procedure.

[Socrates1984]

I am sorry to post again and not editing my first post.

It seems I found a solution. I really don't know how and why it worked, but here it is for anyone who might experience the same problem.

1. Go to your home folder.
2. Press Ctr+H to reveal hidden folders.
3. Navigate to /.local/share/feral-interactive/Medieval II Total War folder.
4. Make a backup copy of the preferences file found there, i.e. copy and paste it somewhere else.
5. Right click on preferences file and edit with gedit.
6. Find this line: <value name="UsePBOSurfaces" type="integer">1</value>
7. Change it to: <value name="UsePBOSurfaces" type="integer">0</value>
8. Save and exit.
9. Start the game via Steam normally.
10. Enjoy!

That's all. As I said, I don't know why this works or if it will cause any other problems later on, but it does work for now. I found the solution here, so all credits go there.

As far as the purpose of this thread, I believe they are fulfilled. I apologize if anyone spent time to figure this out.

[mishkin]

Was going to post exactly the same, good work. (And excellent what you have done in this subforum).

[Socrates1984]

Thanks mishkin for both this thread and the subforum. Credit of course has to be given to Gigantus too for helping out in pretty much everything despite being a Windows user.

[mishkin]

A similar problem appeared in Empire a few months ago (absolutely incomprehensible texts, it looked like Klingon language or something like that). I thought about trying the same solution and it works.

[teddytengteng]

Hi there. I'm also having a no-text problem in Empire. Could you please tell me how you fixed it? What changed did you make to what files exactly? Thanks a lot.

[mishkin]

The only difference would be

I am sorry to post again and not editing my first post.

It seems I found a solution. I really don't know how and why it worked, but here it is for anyone who might experience the same problem.

1. Go to your home folder.
2. Press Ctr+H to reveal hidden folders.
3. Navigate to /.local/share/feral-interactive/Medieval II Total War Empire Total War folder.
4. Make a backup copy of the preferences file found there, i.e. copy and paste it somewhere else.
5. Right click on preferences file and edit with gedit.
6. Find this line: <value name="UsePBOSurfaces" type="integer">1</value>
7. Change it to: <value name="UsePBOSurfaces" type="integer">0</value>
8. Save and exit.
9. Start the game via Steam normally.
10. Enjoy!

That's all. As I said, I don't know why this works or if it will cause any other problems later on, but it does work for now. I found the solution here, so all credits go there.

As far as the purpose of this thread, I believe they are fulfilled. I apologize if anyone spent time to figure this out.

The line that must be changed is in what would be called the second paragraph (line 55).
If my explanation has not been clear, please ask again.

Welcome to TWC, enjoy your stay.

Edit: The mighty arch wiki

Open ~/.local/share/feral-interactive/Empire/preferences, then find UsePBOSurfaces and change it from 1 to 0.