wine users - Feb 2001 - Current Directory Strangely Affects Behaviour of Applications

I am trying to debug a game called Grand Prix Legends, running on wine
with the transgaming patch.  If just spent all day getting nowhere in
winedbg because I couldn't get hold of what the game was doing.

If I cd to the directory in which the game is installed (ie
~/win/sierra/gpl) and then run 

wine gpl.exe

The program starts and fills the whole of my screen with a single
black window.  It sits there until I move the mouse, at which time it
exits.

I have just discovered that if I cd to the root of my c: drive (ie
~/win) and then run

wine c:\\sierra\\gpl\\gpl.exe

The program starts and I get a 640x480 window with the correct startup
screen (I have "Desktop" = "640x480" in my config file).  It
is NOT
managed (even though I have "Managed" = "Y" in my config
file).
However the program appears to partially work - in that

a)  The program responds to the mouse when I click on the correct
parts of the screen,

b)  It runs a race with computer AI cars when I tell it too.

Can anyone suggest why this subtle change might exist?

[As an aside, the colours seem to be the negative of what they should
be - but it could just be a completely wrong pallette, the program
should respond to the keyboard, but all keys affect the underlying
console window in which the game was started, and there is a
multiplayer option where it should (at least) detect that I have a
TCP/IP connection, but doesn't  - can anyone say, are these known
limitations of the transgaming patch?]

Lastly, is the transgaming patch likely to be folded into the up to
date CVS versions of wine anytime soon.


Alan

alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
http://www.chandler.u-net.com