apocalyptech
Published
In order to run the game at all, you've got to run "protontricks 729040 dotnet40" - otherwise it'll die immediately after you try to launch. Once you've done that, it starts out pretty promisingly, but the main problem is there's very severe video glitching as, presumably, data is being loaded - as if there's a video slider and it's going back and forth constantly, so animations are jerking back and forth. On the main menu and the couple of intro cinematics, this just lasts for a couple seconds for me, but once I get to Claptrap handing me the HUD, it doesn't stop, and within a few tens of seconds the process seems to just lock up, sometimes with some crazy graphical glitches. Performance otherwise seems quite promising, actually, but at the moment it's unplayable for me. Disabling Esync makes performance MUCH worse, so don't bother trying that, and the game requires DX11.
This has been quite solid for me - the initial load and menu were quite choppy (which might have been just shaders compiling), but after I changed the renderer ingame to Vulkan (you need to select a save slot to do so) and restarted, I've had few problems, and the game performs fantastically. Occasional crash, generally just between levels. The game appears to leak memory or something; after 45min of play or so my system will start swapping a bit and FPS goes down noticeably, but a game restart sorts that out quickly.
Copied xlive.dll from the wineroot which was created by running the game once, in $STEAM_DIR/SteamApps/compatdata/22370/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/, into the game's root dir, to solve the black-screen issue. Did the suggested INI fixes in $STEAM_DIR/SteamApps/compatdata/22370/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Fallout3/FALLOUT.INI, namely setting "bUseThreadedAI=1" and adding "iNumHWThreads=2" in the [General] section, and adding these to the [Controls] section: fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0, fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0, fForegroundMouseBase=0, and fForegroundMouseMult=0. Also ran "protontricks 22370 l3codecx quartz", which apparently allows the pip boy radio to work. After all that, I've had no problems. Only played up through getting out of Bunker 101 so far, though. The game definitely resists being alt-tabbed out of, but I can generally do some virtual-desktop switching to get it to properly background, and then go back to it later. Have done that a number of times so far without crashes, though sometimes you'll have to try a few times 'cause it might continue to lock the mouse after being backgrounded.
This worked generally great right out of the box for me - no D3D11 tweaks required. xpad w/ 360 controller worked right out of the box as well. As everyone else mentions, starts windowed and gives you the option to change resolution/fullscreen once you get through tutorial, and crashes on exit. I also have a thing where it tends to suddenly gets unplayably slow after starting a second level -- the first one I start has always run perfectly well. (This can also be triggered, seemingly, by hitting the action button while in the "populating the earth with things" line on level load.) So I've settled into a one level, quit, restart loop, which is fine for me.
Proton-5.21-GE-1
I tried this out in Steam's own Proton 5.13 first, and it seemed to have a few issues with that. The main thing was that the intro cutscene didn't work properly -- the audio was triggered and started playing, but the cutscene itself wasn't showing. I just had the audio playing over an overhead in-game map (though I think I couldn't control the character there). Once the cutscene was "over," or if I skipped, my char teleported to the actual start location and all was well.
Switching to the 5.21 GE Proton that I had installed for other games seemed to clear it right up, though!
-vulkan
1.0 was released today, and for me at least (nVidia GTX 1060, 560.35.03), I needed to specify -vulkan as a launch argument in order to launch the game. Otherwise it would hang for a minute or so on the opening spinner and then crash back to desktop. The default mode is DX12, which used to work for me as of the previous version (Update 8), but it seems that for me at the moment, Vulkan is required.
(Note: I had not tried Protons other than Experimental; could be that other versions wouldn't require this.)
I've got some annoying issues w/ the game natively, so figured I'd give the Windows version (via Proton) a try, but in the end I couldn't get it to so much as launch. Tried disabling esync and wine d3d11 (it requires DX11, so disabling d3d11 wasn't an option), it just hangs there for a bit and then dies without ever even creating a window. Tried 3.16-9 Beta and 3.7-8 as well, with no luck on either. Nothing useful in the logs, or on the console. Given that there is the native version, I didn't bother investigating any further.
Still doesn't launch via Proton
I still have periodic audio issues with the native Linux version, and was encouraged that some recentish Proton updates have let Civ 6 work under Proton, so I figured I'd try out Civ:BE in Proton again, just in case the Windows version worked better for me. Alas, it still doesn't seem to launch. Tried with both Proton 6.3 and whatever the "Proton Experimental" version was, as of 2021-08-24. The native version still does mostly work, at least.
Proton-5.21-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
Proton-5.21-GE-1
Have not actually tried "stock" Proton for these, since GE's 5.21 build already includes the mediafoundation stuff that this game requires, so if you use that build, you shouldn't have to worry about any mf-install or mf-installcab shenanigans.
Have not played very far in (still just going through the "tutorial" stuff at the beginning, really), but all the intro cinematics played fine, and the gameplay once in-engine has been butter smooth for me. Didn't tweak any ingame settings apart from restricting framerate to 60 and upping the FOV a bit.
As everyone else has been reporting, will not start. Tried the esync flags and D3D flags (though of course this is probably just DX9, so none of those would apply). As others have said, I've run this with no problems w/ Wine Staging in the past, so I'd recommend doing that for now.
Wonder what those couple of Platinum reports did differently, down below...
