Playing Need for Speed III with Wine

I recently found out that it isn't too difficult getting my favourite racing game, Need for Speed III, to run with Wine.

My current installation is Slackware Linux 12.1 with Wine 1.0 from SlackBuilds.org. My system supports 3D acceleration, so I compiled Wine with OpenGL support (as is the default in the SlackBuild script).

1. Execute winecfg and set the Windows version to 98. Add your CD-ROM mountpoint to the list of drives in Wine. I used drive letter D.
2. Mount the Need for Speed CD-ROM or image.
3. Execute /SETUP/ENGLISH/SETUP.EXE, or choose Spanish if you prefer. Click through the setup options as you would normally. I chose the "full installation" option. There should be no errors during the copying of the files to your hard disk, if there is, try to copy the files manually. There may be an error like Could not get 'HardWareKey' value at the end of the installation, which can be ignored. At this point the game can be run by executing WINEDEBUG=+relay wine nfs3.exe -d3d0 from the directory to which the game was installed. This way the game will also use 3D acceleration, limited to a display size of 800x600. Note: executing wine nfs3.exe will result in the game complaining about corrupted files.
4. To get the game to use a display size of up to 1152x864, the file d3da.dll needs to be patched and renamed to voodoo2a.dll as is explained by Robert Schuster in the Wine AppDB. This will only work if you have the exact same version of the file. I've attached the full file at the bottom of this page to save you some trouble.
5. Now the game can be started using WINEDEBUG=+relay wine nfs3.exe -voodoo2. At this point I was able to play the game without major trouble, though it does tend to get stuck after finishing a race sometimes.