Running Sims 3 under PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu Linux
Back when I was using Windows Vista years ago, I played The Sims 3 and other games for several hours. Once I switched to GNU/Linux, I got rid of these games when I failed to run them under Wine. However, for some reasons, I found a folder which stores The Sims 3 ISO file while cleaning and organize the hard drives today that I downloaded from a website that I don’t remember anymore. I searched over on the Wine database and found that the game and its expansion packs are in the gold state which I assume that it works very well on the GNU/Linux platform.
After searching around in the Ubuntu repositories, I discovered PlayOnLinux which is the front-end of Wine. I installed it and found out that there are almost all the Windows software and games that are pre-configured by PlayOnLinux. One thing that I discovered when I was running The Sims 3 under PlayOnLinux is that the sound would go out about one minute after running the game. The following is the solution that I came up with the help of this PlayOnLinux forum thread:
- Open the terminal and type playonlinux to run the GUI which you can add to the GNOME Menu manually with this command. Read this article on detailed instructions on how to do this.
- Install the game by clicking the Install button on the toolbar and follow the instruction.
- Run the game you installed. If it doesn’t have any sound problem, enjoy the program. Otherwise, go on to the next step.
- Follow the instruction on the first post of this thread under the FIX section.
- Instead of using last step on that thread, create a launcher on the desktop with the following information:
Type: Application
Name: The program name that you installed in step 2. In my case is Sims 3.
Command: padsp playonlinux –run “The Sims 3″
(Replace The Sims 3 with the program name that you want to run, note that this name must exactly the same with the name listed in the PlayOnLinux main window, otherwise it will fail to run)
Comment: Optional. You can add your own description. - You can add an unique icon by clicking the button on the left and select a JPG image.
- Click the launcher that you created and enjoy the game.
- You can also add this launcher to the GNOME menu by following the instruction from the link I provided in step 1.
If you have any problem for the above steps, leave a comment below and I will try to help as quick as possible. Note that I will not answer comments other than sound problem, especially the CD-related issue for the legal concern of my hosting provider.
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that was so helpful…thanks alot
Hi Dominik,
I installed playonlinux from the Ubuntu repository with the default Wine version, which is 1.1.42. Sims 3 plays very well on this version. I tested with 1.3.5 and it also works fine for me. I remembered that it needs to download and install DirectX and other required components to run the game when installing first game with playonlinux.
One possible reason I can think of is that there is something wrong with the TS3.exe you patched. Can you tell me where is the TS3.exe do you get from?
Hey Robby,
thanks for the quick reply. The past few days Ive been setting up my Laptop from scratch since I did a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04
Today I installed Playonlinux, wine and tried to install Sims3. Everything went surprisingly well during the installation, I patched the final TS3.exe and tried to start the game: no reaction. Then I updated to Wine 1.3.5 and Sims 3 1.15…still no reaction.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Dominik
Hi Dominik,I installed playonlinux from the Ubuntu repository with the default Wine version, which is 1.1.42. Sims 3 plays very well on this version. I tested with 1.3.5 and it also works fine for me. I remembered that it needs to download and install DirectX and other required components to run the game when installing first game with playonlinux.One possible reason I can think of is that there is something wrong with the TS3.exe you patched. Can you tell me where is the TS3.exe do you get from?
Hey Robby,
I can start the game, I get the sound but not the audio of the game 
thanks for the input. I did reinstall the game and patched it with a different patch. Now it kind of works
Hi Dominik,
I think the forum that I pointed out in the above post solves both sound and audio issues. Here is the link again:
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-2661-Ubuntu_Jaunty_Sims_3_Sound.html
Thanks Robby, now sound works fine, the game works fine until loading a town… then the menu doesnt have any text, most of the town is black and not clickable. Also creating a sim is affected that way
Ill just google my way through. Thanks for your help so far.
You are welcome. Based on your statement, I believe that you have some graphic driver issues. Good luck on solving these issues.
Hey Robby,
I have also tried for months now to get Sims working on my Ubuntu 10.10 but it just doesnt seem to work. It installed just fine, it even starts fine in Wine but right after the intro the screen goes black with some abnormal grafic structures. Music plays fine and the mouse cursor is also normal. I have read about this “bug” in Wine AppDB (Bug 15380 ) but have not been able to dicifer the solution given there…
I hope you can help me on this one…
Thanks already for the great explanation above.
Dominik
Hi, Dominik:
I’m afraid I cannot help you. I have gone back to Ubuntu 10.04 from 10.10 because I just don’t like the new version: http://blog2.robbychen.com/2010/10/18/the-reasons-why-i-switched-back-to-ubuntu-10-04/
I didn’t try to install and run The Sims 3 when using Ubuntu 10.10. Although the game is running fine under Ubuntu 10.04.
Hope this helps.