Fallout New Vegas, Honest Hearts: No more sound using wine-1.3

After installing the Honest Hearts DLC for Fallout New Vegas, all of the sudden the in-game sound stops working the second I load a savegame. Running FalloutNV.exe from the console, I get tons of these as soon as the game goes mute:

fixme:quartz:Parser_QueryInterface No interface for {2dd74950-a890-11d1-abe8-00a0c905f375}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_QueryInterface No interface for {2dd74950-a890-11d1-abe8-00a0c905f375}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_QueryInterface No interface for {2dd74950-a890-11d1-abe8-00a0c905f375}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_OutputPin_QueryInterface No interface for {56a868a5-0ad4-11ce-b03a-0020af0ba770}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_OutputPin_QueryInterface No interface for {56a868a5-0ad4-11ce-b03a-0020af0ba770}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_QueryInterface No interface for {2dd74950-a890-11d1-abe8-00a0c905f375}!
fixme:quartz:Parser_QueryInterface No interface for {2dd74950-a890-11d1-abe8-00a0c905f375}!

As a quick workaround, go into your Wine configuration, create a custom application setting for Fallout if you haven’t already, click the Libraries tab and add an override for quartz.

Native then Builtin did the trick for me.

Welcome to Berzerk Land! It’s play ball time and the Berzerk Crew is ready to teach Comeau the nerd a good lesson! Bash the hell out of this geek all the way through Berzerk Land, earn money to buy new gear and gain experience to increase the power of your character! Rack up big scores, submit them and show the world what you’ve got!

My record is just a bit more than a million feet so far… Only took me a couple hours :-/

Get Portal for free! And OS X as well…

As most of you die-hard Mac users already know, hardly any major game worth playing is available for OS X (except EVE Online maybe). For some odd reason, some at Valve decided to port Steam to OS X and make it available to the “huge” Apple gaming community… Well, whatever…

So why even mention it? Because at the same time, they decided to give Portal away for free! Most likely to get some media attention and give Apple fanboys at least one excuse to install their app. Guess it worked, but who cares – you can get one of the most innovative games of recent years entirely for free. Yeah, even if you’re on Windows.

Portal used to cost money. Until May 24th, it’s free. End of story.

Well, technically speaking, there are some strings attached. Fortunately, they’re entirely decorative. We just like the way they look, swaying in the gentle breeze created by a million people simultanously fainting from shock at the news that Portal is free. Now you have no reason not to try Portal.

“I have a reason,” some of you are probably typing into an angry email. “You see, sir, I own a Mac.”

Well guess what: For the first time ever, Portal is also available for the Mac.

“Capital news! But the excellent puzzle adventure Portal won over 40 Game of the Year awards; Surely it must cost at least five or six hundred dollars.”

You’d think that, especially since it actually won over 70 Game of the Year Awards. But, like we keep saying, Portal is free. Free on the Mac. Free on the PC. But only until May 24th. So you only have a few days to decide if your free copy of Portal is worth the price we’re currently charging – which is you ever-so-slightly moving your index finger just barely enough to click the big red “download” button right there to the left.

Ok, so there’s no big red button here… But it’s right here on their site. And from “inside” their steam client you just have to click on play now and wait till it’s downloaded. Have fun!