The Loan Ranger
Published
This is one of the better examples of a windows title running flawlessly on proton
Switching workspaces in gnome can be a little weird with the game running. The solution is to just not do that. Aside from that, no real windowing issues.
I used both proton 5.13-6 and 6.3-2 once it was available (the whole campaign and DLCs were played on proton). I noticed no significant performance differences nor issues with the game. It runs near flawlessly.
Aside from minor issues with fullscreen and audio, it's identical to the windows experience.
There is a very tiny delay between actions ingame and the audio that accompanies it. It's almost imperceptible and most users won't notice. The only reason it stands out to me is I have ~800 hours in this game, most of which were on windows 10.
Behavior in gnome is odd. I have to use 125% UI scaling in gnome in order to read text in my 1440p monitor. Occasionally the game will launch perfectly and have no issues. Other times it'll launch stretched with only the upper left quarter visible and prevent my mouse from moving beyond the first quarter of my monitor. This requires a force quit of the game (super/winkey + Q on gnome) and subsequent deletion of the GameUserSettings.ini (located by right clicking DRG, properties, local files, browse, steamapps/common/Deep Rock Galactic/Saved/Config/WindowsnoEditor) so the game can generate a fresh version on a subsequent relaunch. Aside from that, it feels like fullscreen when it works.
I was unable to get gsync working out of the box. Both my gpu and monitor support gsync and the proper cables are installed. Vsync works fine with a cap of 120 fps, however it doesn't eliminate screen tearing. I will need to tinker further with gsync and see if I can get it functional under gnome.
As with proton 5.13-6 the audio is slightly delayed compared to windows. It's enough to be noticeable if you've played the game for a while. However, to newer players I don't think it's a large enough delay to hamper enjoyment of the game.
I've run the game using Proton 5.13-6, 6.1-GE-2, and 6.5-GE-1. Running proton 5.13-6 requires no tinkering at all.
Running proton 6.1 or 6.5 requires mfplat.dll to either be deleted or renamed so it isn't utilized (as other reports have mentioned). Just do a search of your file system for "mfplat" and edit the file name of each one.
In doing so, the game may launch with a black screen. This is resolved by simply hitting the space bar a couple of time to "skip" the videos that aren't capable of playing. I noticed no further issues with performance or network connectivity.
It's a UE4 game, so like all UE4 games it suffers from stuttering due to shader streaming. The stuttering isn't bad in the game, but it's there. It's also going to be there in Windows. Aside from that, it runs just fine. No issues with key bindings, graphical settings, audio, or general gameplay.
6.16-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
Proton 6.16-GE-1
Plug & Play Just Like Windows
I didn't play it with keyboard and mouse. Played it with my steam controller. Ran into no issues.
6.16-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
6.16-GE-1
6.16-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
6.16-GE-1
The ending fails to play at the framerate of the game and is effectively frozen (unless you pause and unpause the game in which case it progresses by about one whole frame at a time). This can be mitigated by navigating to the game's install directory, opening settings.txt in your favorite text editor, then changing "use30hz" from false to true as explained by mascherone108 below.
The game did not launch for me using the native port. I had to use proton to play it. While I did use GloriousEggroll I imagine it'll run just fine on regular proton as others have pointed out.
Aside from some trivial issue with volume, the game is fantastic on proton
Audio was a bit quieter than I was used to. A quick 10% increase in system volume and everything was back to normal.
I noticed about a ~20 fps drop compared to playing on windows while playing Cold War. That's down from 120 to around 100 fps. There were some very minor stutters that I honestly probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't have magohud to relay to me frametimes.
I was using a thrustmaster warthog joystick for my gameplay. It worked flawlessly once I rebound all the functions to my preferred layout. Proton experimental was used.
Aside from a minor issue in windowing, it plays as if I'm on Windows when using Proton 5.13
Attempting to set resolution to 1440p in exclusive fullscreen would result in the maximum framerate being 20. I was able to resolve this by playing the game in fullscreen window. This let me set the refresh rate to 144 hz. No further issues.
PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 %command%
Some noteable performance issues. On experimental there would be continuous frames which would take longer to draw than the rest. I'd say for most of the time I'd sit at ~110 FPS then it'd hitch down to ~80. This was a frequent occurance. It was far from unplayable and with such a high framerate to begin with it didn't really affect gameplay all that much. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice it. This was present on dx11 and dx12.
I ran the ingame benchmark a few times with different configurations. With my system my performance was "abysmal" on the native version. Framerate never went past 80 and would regularly hitch down into the 30's. Running via proton on dx12 resulted in marginally higher framerates, but it still wasn't great. Finally running via proton with dx11 resulted in the best performance, although I'd note that there were still frame drops. Something I have noticed with the present version of proton (at time of writing) is it does have an issue with stuttering. I didn't use any other version as I wanted to utilize DLSS and couldn't get it to work with 7.0 or 6.3.
I would recommend trying the game first with a proton version other than experimental if you don't want to play native.
There are some quirks with the game, but it runs just fine on Proton 6.3-2 once those are resolved
Very minor. I use gnome, I'm sure the experience will be similar for others on other desktop environments.
On launch the initial splashscreen is displayed. Then the game will stop responding. Once it finishes loading it'll minimize itself and give the appearance as if it has crashed. Simply click the icon where it minimized to and it'll launch correctly.
Another minor issue. Light flickering of the mouse cursor when hardware mouse was enabled. Disable it under "options > video" to fix.
The only instability I experienced with the game was likely to do with the mods selected. This is not an issue with proton, more an issue with the ancient engine struggling to do way more than it was designed to.
As for mods, they work. Launch forces of corruption > options > mods and select the mod you'd like to use. It'll relaunch the game and you'll have to deal with the minimizing quirk of it launching, but that's it.
Launching directly into a mod via steam launch options also appears to work, but I have limited experience with this on proton.
Using Proton 6.12-GE-1 or 5.13-6 results in a near perfect experience
I played about an hour each using proton versions 6.12-GE-1 and 5.13-6 with no graphical issues on either. I can't comment on 6.3-5.
It should be noted that because the game is about 16 years old, there's no widescreen support. This is an issue with the game rather than proton. Just something to be aware of.
As Simple As Can Be
The game installed and ran out of the box. No tinkering on my part required at all. No bugs experienced either.
Just Like The Original, This Game Runs Flawlessly*
*I did have one experience where the framerate dropped significantly. This was after I switched workspaces to view something on my web browser. My best guess is the System76 scheduler was pulling resources from the game and giving them elsewhere and was just slow in returning them to the game or the game was slow to recover once it had those resources back. I did not experience this performance problem after that one event and I don't expect it to be an issue for most people.
Near Flawless Experience Native
Unlike my experience playing Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, this game runs amazing native. No hitching, stuttering, pop-in, or other technical issues. It ran exceptionally well. The only issues I ran into were when interact prompts wouldn't appear. Though I can count on one hand how many times that happened throughout the game. I very much recommend running the game native.
Native did not function, but proton did and boy did it do a good job
Mouse cursor was fairly sensitive. Resolved this by reducing the DPI on my mouse.
I played this with proton 7.0-1. I should note that this was originally played with proton experimental. That resulted in the game freezing every 40 minutes or so. I had to force close the game once that happened. Only minor stutters once every several minutes on 7.0-1. The game did not launch without the use of proton.
Another game that runs like native
I had no minor or significant performance issues with this game. I think folks would be hard pressed to blindly identify any difference between this game running on windows or via proton.
Everything works just fine except for the audio which suffers from major quality degradation
Audio after the first level I played sounded like I was in the bottom of a tin can.
I want to make it clear that the graphical settings, gameplay, and general functionality of the game functions perfectly through proton. The only real issue is the audio. If you don't care about the audio then you'll be fine, and the issue I experienced was after the first mission. Otherwise someone smarter than me will need to come up with a solution.
