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Cutscenes would not play without using protontricks to install the "mf" DLL set.
If moving from Windows, remove config file from /home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/893180/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Application Data/TheEccentricApe/Catherine
V-Sync breaks fullscreen, makes app launch in nonexistently small window
Proton 3 - launches, untested
Proton 4/5 - fail to launch, runtime error
Proton 7 - works
9/Experimental - no launch at all
Mixed bag vs using Experimental
ONLY WITH EXPERIMENTAL: the audio drifts in and out of sync (behind) with the pre-rendered cutscenes (mf-install was generally in sync)
ONLY WITH MF-INSTALL: the pre-rendered scenes lower the performance of the game to ~40 (Experimental was ~60)
Ran great outside of the issues with the pre-rendered movies. Both Experimental and mf-install have their own issues, but do not use 9.0-4 as the pre-rendered movies will flash occasionally.
Without mf-install, the Steam overlay would change between a 720p display and a 1080p one, especially during pre-rendered movies. The cursor was also not visible unless hovering over an element regardless of what was used.
Videos not displayed
The game itself launches and runs with GE-Proton9-21 but the videos wouldn't work properly (only sound, no pictures).
I tried to solve the issue by applying the following Protontricks workaround to no avail: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/15pee9k/comment/k9z58q8/ Ultimately, I bruteforced the issue and used FFMPEG to convert all .wvm videos in the Movie and Movie2 folders to .mp4, a format actually supported by GE-Proton or Experimental.
If you try to apply the same solution, don't forget to remove the original .wmv from the folders and rename the new files extension to *.wmv so that the game can find these back when calling the videos. Restoring the original files can be done by simply verifying the game's files in Steam.
PROTON_USE_WINE3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
Locked to 30fps and 6watts
Sometimes need to alt+enter two times to restore the game
Works fine on GE-Proton9-21 with video cutscenes and the correct depth of field (this was an issue with GE-Proton8-28). The Altus logo displays at the start of the game, all beginning cutscenes work, and the cutscene on Trisha's TV works. I played through the first boss with no issues reported.
No additional parameters are needed.
IMPORTANT! You must set the resolution to 1280x720 and use a borderless window. With a resolution of 1280x800, the Altus logo will work, but other cutscenes won’t.
The game will take a very long time to launch the first time on GE-Proton—wait until the game launches or the "Running" green label disappears in the Steam library.
I had a lot of truble to run this game with cutscenes, used protontricks etc., nothing worked for me. As I thought GE-Proton couldn't launch the game, I saw "Running" label in steam and no game window. Finally I tried to:
- remove all data in
.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/893180, - remove
~/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.dcontent also - install fresh GE-Proton9-21 with ProtonUp-QT (install with Discover)
- don't forget to install drivers as GE-Proton requires
sudo pacman -S --needed lib32-mesa vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader - restart the Steam, then in the game compatibility properties tick the checkbox and select GE-Proton9-21
- clear all launch options in steam game properties
Then launched the game and waited for 5-10 minutes, after that the game worked like a charm.
Original Steam Proton-Experimental and v9 work, but there are no cinematics or color bars—just noise instead of the cinematics.
Followed this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/15pee9k/how_to_fix_catherine_classic/
come on dude below, atleast give us the guide to use mf-install rather than just "yeah it work with it"
Installed mf_catherine.verb
None of other reports from this page (below) and the next page hepled me - either video don't play, game had audio issues, or something else. Only working combination I found is latest GE-Proton with mf_catherine.verb script. I was able to complete the game with just two or three crashes. All graphics features work with this combination, so you won't need to adjust graphical settings or switch from DXVK to WINED3D.
I cant really put a "maybe" because well the game works out of the box but no story cutscene is just bruh
game uses .wmv as its cutscene and it just doesnt show up
As stated above any pre-rendered/animation cutscene is just a no
you absolutely have to use nvidia-utils and its lib32 nouveau does not work at all
Unable to boot / Crashes
Tried multiple Proton vers / GE Proton vers doesn't boot at all
I can get experimental with "PROTON_USE_WINE3D=1 gamemoderun %command%" to run the game except it's either distorted or crashs with "!status && vkAcquireNextImageKHR"
Steam Ver for linux is borked for me. There are probably other workarounds to play this game, but hopefully there will be a fix for this game. ):
I've tried many different versions of protons and command line options but nothing works.
Borked
Cinematics (when they work that is) seem to crash the game
This game heavily relies on cinematics, and they either don't show up, or crash the game.
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
Choppy videos, and low framerate during the gameplay if not in fullscreen mode with certain versions of Proton
Sometimes the game would boot to a tiny window, I could switch back to borderless by pressing ALT+Enter twice, but it woudln't go to fullscreen.
Some crashes, sometimes the game would hang at loading screens.
Proton versions older than 8 wouldn't make it pas the first loading screen, 8 and 9 were not super stable and had big glitches in videos, Experimental was better but not perfect for the videos, but the framerate didn't seem to go up to 60 during gameplay like the (one of? can't remember) other versions. None of the configurations really were enjoyable to play.
Finally playable on linux without GE :)
Full screen and 800p crashes the game
If it can't load a video it crashes the game
GE Proton 8-28 claims to have fixed the missing videos problem, but fact is, if you played it and not just looked at the intro and concluded that it works, it is not fixed at all. Literally 8/10 cases it can't load the video still and if it doesn't load the video, the game freezes and you have to close it. That goes for the intro and plenty of in-game cutscenes, maybe you're lucky and the intro works, cool, maybe after a level the cutscene does work, awesome and then it tries to load another one right after and it's dead, you have to close again. So no, this issue is still not fixed and I consider it unplayable because of it because if that happens, you have to replay the whole level and that sucks.
Going trough the Intro and then "Destroy" itself
The problems with cutscenes are a huge issue as they are integral to the story of the game.
Heavy flickering or fully missing animated FMV cutscenes.
Fullscreen did not work for me, but borderless worked without issues.
The cutscenes were completely missing on Proton Experimental and GE-Proton8-28. On GE-Proton9-7, the cutscenes sometimes worked but with flickering or they were completely missing too. I used protontricks (from the github issue above), otherwise the game would refuse to even start with GE-Proton. Other than that, I experienced no other issues during gameplay or with stability of the game. I would not recommend to play until the cutscenes are fixed as they are a vital part of the story.
Fullscreen makes the game 1 pixel tall after you restart the game. Use borderless fullscreen to fix this.
The game crashes randomly, happened last time after a random sheep tutorial
The game fails to play videos (and continue) with regular proton. with proton ge videos work but the game crashes randomly and frequently. This happens no matter which proton ge version you use.
The game resolution is 1 pixel tall if you use fullscreen mode and restart the game. To fix this use borderless fullscreen option.
The game works only with Proton GE 8.28. Other versions cause crashes or getting stuck at sheep tutorials and Proton without GE fails to play videos.
Some sheep tutorials dont display the video properly
If you fullscreen the game and restart the game the game will be 1 pixel tall. Fixed by using borderless fullscreen.
Crashes often
GE-Proton8-28 gave me the best results. Using no GE meant missing videos and a newer version of GE like 9-2 made the game crash during Trisha's introduction.
There seems to be a DoF issue with in-engine cutscenes (at least for me) where everything will be blurry in mid-range shots but close-up shots of characters are normal. Turning off Depth of Field in the settings fixed it for me.
Flickering FMV cutscenes and blurry ingame cutscenes
Playing with ProtonGE 9-2 made all the FMV cutscenes work correctly. In the ingame settings change Depth of Field to "off" this fixes the blurry ingame cutscenes. Also change borderless window to fullscreen to stop FMV flickering. After these steps the game is working flawlessly for me.
Movies would not play, though everything else seems to be working out of the box.
Stuttery playback of some cutscenes, others missing entirely
Would not recommend playing with Proton Hotfix unless you already know the story, as otherwise you can miss a fair bit of context due to cut scene issues
Proton GE 9.1 also didn't work for me (the game never launched after several minutes)
For the cutscenes on Proton9 (beta), it either displays a "test screen" image or the screen flickers rapidely between black and white. The GE version has no such problems: the cutscenes are displayed normally
40Hz/FPS and fixed 6W TDP for almost 6 hours. Also can play 60FPS with 7W.
From time to time video in cutscenes gets blurred. As if camera focus was changed. I event thought it should be this way. But at the second thought I think it is a something not right. Don't remember bluriness at these moments in my previous game experience
Finally it works! I tried many times couple of years ago and there were constant problems with cutscenes. That ruins the game. Now you just set Proton GE and run. First time it takes some time to start. But after this it is just fine. Set TLD = 10 to improve battery perfomance. Did it just in case, maybe it is not needed. But anyway no any problems. No any stuttering. FPS is stable 60.
After 9 months from my last review you can finally play Catherine on Linux for the first time, without any crash, Proton-GE is the way to go to make the cutscenes work, i tried both experimental and hotfix and they don't have cutscenes but Proton-GE does now
Requires Proton-GE. Make sure to set your monitor refresh rate no higher than 60 fps or it'll glitch cutscenes
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
Proton GE takes a while to launch first try as it downloads Codex.
While it did start with pretty much any previous Proton version, you were never able to get past the first cutscene, as it would just not play or simply crash the game. Using Hotfix (by Valve, not Proton GE) it now works without crashing and with playing all the cutscenes without any problems. [2024-01-30] I had to keep Steam Input enabled to be able to use my controller (Xbox controller), but as it's enabled by default I just wanted to mention it without giving it too much weight.
The first time, the game takes a lot of time to run. Then, you can play correctly and videos plays well (previous versions didn't run them)
Videos dont play, stuck at sheep tutorial
Videos dont play, stuck at sheep tutorial
I have tried proton ge and other tricks as described in other reports and the game works but videos play too fast and desync with audio, making it unwatchable. Also with wine 3d blur is buggy and incorrectly applied
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
Runs fine once you can get it running, I forget what, if anything beyond whats listed, I needed to do to get it running but it seems to be a finicky game to start running. I don't play it very often and unless I pin it to the listed version with the given flags it tends to not start
The game mode Babel works in Single. VSYNC on Off makes the cinematics stutters so it must be set to On. Display Mode always gets reset back to Borderless after restarting the game, you must use the Recommended Official Controller Layout for the game to recognize any input and the game might crash at any time. Stuck after choosing New Game but it works when choosing Load Game. When you progress further into the game, you get stuck on a different Loading Screen anyways so you can't play any further.
Not consistent 60 FPS but definitely more than playable (30 FPS+) with maximum settings 1280x720, which means there's room for adjustments to improve performance.
No need for any tinkering or messing with wine verbs, it seems Catherine likes GEProton8-20. Works out of the box with 0 issues as far as I could tell. I started it up and then loaded a save game without issues and started playing.
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
What I did to make it work:
I installed the Steam, Flatseal, Protonup-Qt and Protontricks Flatpaks from Flathub.
Using Steam flatpak, I installed and tried to run Catherine Classic (in order to generate the requisite directories for the next steps).
Using Protonup-Qt, I downloaded GE-Proton7-43 to the Steam Flatpak runtime.
For Catherine Classic, I changed the default Proton version to GE-Proton7-43 and added the following Launch Options: PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 gamemoderun %command%
I used Flatseal to change Protontricks permissions to "All System Files"
Run command: echo "alias protontricks='flatpak run com.github.Matoking.protontricks'" >> ~/.bashrc
Run command: wget https://gist.github.com/Neodamode/22871fae8020a87a6cd816ccac405358/raw/83f1c56add0adbcff9d116b2a51a157da7bcc954/mf_catherine.verb
Run command: protontricks --no-bwrap 893180 --force mf_catherine.verb
Once game started, I disabled V-sync and ran 1600x900 Windowed mode. Game ran flawlessly!
Without the tinkering steps listed, game would load the menu screen and wouldn't start game or play any animations. Side note: I did the following steps after completely uninstalling the game and deleting the Proton folders for the previous installation attempts. Game works flawlessly without any crashes or issues once configured correctly.
