Game just completely broken and no buttons are loading

[Jake1702 5]

You know, I came back to this game after a few years after getting a computer again a while ago, and then I'm reminded of why I stopped playing in the first place. I really just want someone to tell me what is breaking my game, this is what it looks like: 

 

 

I attached my modset below (It doesn't contain everything, but apparently something there is what is breaking it). Seriously, I've spent nearly a week trying to get my game set up and I'm getting very frustrated. I am playing through wine, but I very highly doubt that is the cause of the issue.

my-modset.sc4pac.json

  Edited January 7 by Jake1702  
Added wine info

[TogaMasterJohn 705]

For the text to be missing like that, I can't help but wonder it is a Wine-related issue (I've experienced a very similar issue to this before). I'm guessing you've been trying to run the game under Linux in the past as well? I looked through your SC4Pac JSON, and unless I missed something, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary that could cause the text to be missing.

I'd be happy to try to help you, as I use both Linux and Wine myself, as that's how I primarily play the game these days.

1. Which distro are you using?
2. What is your GPU?
3. Which version or fork of Wine are you using?
4. Are you using the GOG release or the Steam release?
5. Have you tried using the software renderer?
6. In its current state, does the game present weird visual anomalies when you go to scroll around the region or try to access a city tile?

From what I've personally experienced so far, the game can be rather interesting to get up and running under Linux. Unfortunately, it can be quite cumbersome. It really comes down to your distro, GPU (and its driver), the version or fork of Wine you are using, and which release of the game you have. For some players, it is really easy, and for others, it takes a varying amount of work to get the game up and running without having to use the game's software renderer, which is the worst-case scenario (and even then, it isn't a guarantee that it'll work without issues). Throughout the past seven years, I've tried the game on nearly every machine that I have running Linux, all with varying degrees of success.

For example, on my main machine, I was able to get the GOG release of the game to work with Lutris and Wine-GE (version 8-26-x86_64) under Linux Mint 22. Regular Wine did not work for me (if I remember correctly, I tested versions 5 through 9). I have an AMD Radeon RX 580, and I'm using the included open-source drivers. The only problem that I experienced and couldn't resolve was the audio would sometimes glitch and cause audible anomalies whenever I went to click on anything that had a respective sound effect (planting trees, placing roads, interacting with the UI, etc.). But other than that? The game is fully playable with hardware rendering and mods, just like it was/is under Windows (the RX 580 is old enough that a DirectX wrapper isn't necessary like it is with newer GPUs).  And while I haven't tested it yet, it's possible that a newer version of Wine-GE may fix the audio problem that I experience.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 07/01/2026 at 1:03 AM, Jake1702 said:

I attached my modset below (It doesn't contain everything, but apparently something there is what is breaking it).

If you are yet to reach the point where you can get the game to initialise properly, you would be better off not installing mods at this juncture.

For example, to test if said mods are causing a problem, temporarily move your Plugins folder to somewhere the game doesn't see and try to run SC4.

[Lab Rat 13]

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