jamesmcm03
Published
SKIPINTRO
Occasional desync issues, mostly perfect after the DLL fix - proton_aoe2de_mpfix
Use https://github.com/ardba/proton_aoe2de_mpfix for multiplayer
Worked perfectly out the box, just double check that audio isn't muted in the game if you hear no sound (as it was by default for me).
Black screen on starting new game
This used to work before, so something new must have broken it.
I even tried disabling the Steam overlay and forcing wined3d.
Black screen, music plays
Even after installing d3dx9 to the prefix, and setting PROTON_NO_D3D11=1 %command% as described in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/641 - the same issue persists
Fix font sizing: protontricks 454530 -q corefonts gdiplus
Lower screen resolution for graphical scaling, note some window popups (e.g. save game) can interfere with tiling window managers
Video tutorials do not work Turn calculations can become very slow but I think this is the same on Windows
Use protontricks to fix font issues
Overall works very well, mic and Discord integration do not work.
Microphone is not detected at all
Discord Invite integration does not work, Microphone is not detected
Note that the microphone input does not work, and nor does the Discord Invitations (game is not detected), so playing with others can be a bit of a hassle (direct Steam invites do work).
Occasional crashes, might be in the game normally
Works perfectly, good on Steam Deck too
Used to work, but seems recent patches have broken it
The game now hangs when trying to launch a level - it worked fine back in February on the same hardware!
Game crashes when loading main menu
Game crashes on launch - seems to be a Nvidia issue from other reports here
For mods use Proton and Linux CKAN (e.g. installed via the AUR) - first install the game as the Linux version, copy the Linux binaries somewhere, then switch it to Proton Experimental and copy them back to the game folder. This allows you to use Linux CKAN on the host (I could not get CKAN to work within Proton via protontricks) while launching the game in Proton via Steam.
After that it works perfectly. The normal Linux version is okay, but the performance is a little worse and Parallax shadows won't work.
I recommend the graphical mods: Parallax, EVE, AVP configs, TUFX, Real Plume, Scatterer, Engine Lighting Relit, PlanetShine, Textures Unlimited and Distant Object Enhancement. And the Transfer Window Planner and Kerbal Alarm Clock for quality-of-life. Then there's also RP-1 if you want to overhaul the game.
Everything worked fine out of the box
Black screen on launch, closes after a few seconds
Tried installing dxvk and vcrun2019
Installed with Heroic Games Launcher on Steam Deck.
On Heroic Games Launcher fails with:
[S_API] SteamAPI_Init(): SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() did not locate a running instance of Steam. [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed
Via Proton in Steam directly fails with:
Attempting to call PsyNet_X.QueueRPC() without a primary connection
protontricks 1154840 -q corefonts gdiplus set true to false in ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Shadow Empire/direct2d.txt
Has issues with tiled WM (i3) where the pop-up windows make the game shrink to a small floating window - forcing fullscreen again fixes it
The UI renders extremely slowly (20 FPS or lower) and keypresses buffer slowly too
Maybe this could be improved with the Direct2D hardware acceleration support - this would require finishing the implementation of at least the Scale built-in d2d1 effect in WINE to allow the scaling to be done on the GPU with an HLSL shader via Direct2D.
But it still seems strange that the UI rendering is so slow in general, since I have a very fast CPU.
Disable UI scaling and lower your screen resolution instead, or the FPS will be very low
Install corefonts and gdiplus with protontricks:
protontricks 1154840 -q corefonts gdiplus
Disable Direct2D GPU shader Scale effect in ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Shadow Empire/direct2d.txt by setting true to false on both lines.
Lower screen resolution instead of using built-in game UI scaling
Pop-up screens for file select, colour select, renaming, etc. appear as separate windows which interferes with full-screen in i3
You must disable the UI scaling in-game or it will be incredibly slow since WINE does not support the d2d1 Scale effect at the moment
At the moment WINE does not support the Direct2D GPU shader Scale built-in effect - in order for UI scaling to be performant this will need to be implemented in d2d1/effect.c like a Custom Effect implementing ID2D1EffectImpl, with the shader itself written in HLSL
Hopefully this can be done in the future, in case the game uses more d2d1 hardware accelerated effects.
Native version works perfectly
Be sure to install pipewire-alsa to get sound to work if using pipewire.
