Vitruvian Stick Figure
Published
It's an amazing game, but if your system is like mine, you should be prepared to kill the X server (check your keyboard settings) on exiting
Strangely, the program retains control of my mouse cursor on quitting. I can't use it after running the (otherwise flawless) game!
The game, DX11 or Vulkan, does not want to give back my mouse cursor. I can even interact with programs with my keyboard, on XFCE or Plasma; but I can't use it after running it. I Ctrl+Alt+Bksp and kill the X server. Hopefully this gets fixed.
Game does not properly shut down; but runs very smoothly.
I have precious few complaints about this, it mostly just worked. The anomaly on quitting is something I've never seen before. I have not yet tried multiplayer, it might be fixed with a different Proton version.
This was a rigamarole, but use Proton Experimental, set your launch options, and install two items with Protontricks, and it'll run smooth.
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% DXVK_ASYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1
d3dx9 d3dcompiler_43
Some dialogue is missing; the solution is to switch your settings to stereo instead of 5.1 or 7.1; or sometimes just put on headphones. Then you'll hear everything.
This game has never been perfect about stuttering on hard drive access, even on Windows; but it was still enjoyable.
Fail to make the changes and it won't even launch, with a complaint about a shader failing to compile.
The initial problems with the PC port had me skeptical, but this thing runs a little warm at worst and the bugs have been very minor.
If you use anything above stereo (like 5.1), you'll lose a lot of the dialog audio. Set your system to stereo during gameplay and it's fine.
There's still a little stuttering when in the Batmobile, but nothing serious or interfering. I wouldn't worry about it.
Nothing serious, one crash when exiting the game. Autosave is frequent enough for this to be a minor, if real, issue.
Very enjoyable. Most of these bugs are not Linux related and also occur on Windows, but generally I would call it a good buy.
Progression is impossible as of region 2, with the area randomized so that even YouTube walkthroughs can't really help.
Disappearing platforms are completely invisible in a randomized area. Aside from ludicrous trial and error, there's no way to progress past this.
Fullscreen causes periodic strange freezes and mistiling
Fullscreen is almost unusable
This is down as Deck compatible aside from not natively supporting its resolution; this is incorrect. An entire layer of survival-critical textures do not render! You don't even realize it until you can't progress further without them.
There was previously a bug that prevented region 2's disappearing platforms from rendering, but the people at DXVK fixed it. Runs smooth.
I'm only at region two, but the deal-breaker bug has been fixed. (It involved a depth testing issue for DXVK, which was patched after a proper bug report.) Seems to run fine now!
There was a bug with a specific (survival critical) texture layer not rendering, but DXVK patched that recently.
Any attempt to switch between fullscreen and windowed, including through settings, seems to result in a freeze. Alt+tabbing does the same. Better to run it windowed, I think.
VSync and frame smoothing must be turned off to prevent stuttering, and freezes at cut scenes. Other than that, it's been absolutely flawless.
The first cut scene is just a black screen unless V-Sync is turned off.
For the most part this runs as well as I would expect on Windows, maybe even better. I'm only seeing jagged frames when forced frame smoothing is on, which is a dodgy option anyway.
It *almost* works, but the frame rate bounced between 20 and 30. It needs a little more work.
Also followed the advice to rename BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe.
Massive frame rate drop.
FPS stutters quite a bit. For an active shooter like Borderlands, it was unplayable.
Needs just a little more work (which is surprising for 2K). Get rid of that stutter and everything else is acceptable-to-good.
Had to change exe from BorderlandGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe
Input was laggy until frame limiter was set to unlimited.
Game was launchable (after a weird name tweak), but not enjoyable; I had it on low with very dampened resolution, and still had strange stuttering.
Aside from the lack of cut scenes this is a very stable and enjoyable game.
No cutscene can play. (Still happening on 6.2.) You just get black black screen that you can button-mash through. Cut scenes are available on YouTube, though.
Runs great on Proton Experimental; though Proton 6.3 couldn't get past the Square/Enix logo without crashing.
Use GE-Proton7-31 and it functions perfectly. I didn't even need to mess with launch options. (Go Eggroll!)
It's funny how so many games which run on emulators require so much setup on Proton, when Linux native emulators handle them beautifully. For this cover, additional videos and all, all you need is the Glorious Eggroll pack.
Initially, I kept getting a Japanese error message sporadically, which image-translated to "F?". Otherwise it ran great.
This sounded suspiciously similar to "file", so I enabled "Large Address Aware" and have successfully completed the first level of Castlevania I without issue. If I run into the problem again in the future, (since I'm planning on barn-storming all of these classics), I'll update this review.
It's also worth metnioning that I could barely start the game and get past the menu with Proton 4.2-9 before getting that message; 4.11-6 is much more agreeable. For those not yet in the know, the launch options are "PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command%".
Initially I had a number issues with getting spammed by a Japanese error message, but this seemed to be resolved with Large Address Aware. However, the game cannot save to disk without crashing, and I'm not sure how to fix it. If you were willing to play without saving, it works perfectly well.
Ran the entire game, beginning to end, without a single glitch or issue of any kind.
Ran beginning to end without any issue or sign of an issue, just like on Windows.
I figured I'd try it on 5.09 since it's been a while. Still go to a black screen with the mouse cursor, followed by a dump to desktop.
Runs great; Media Foundation is interfering with opening animations, but these have nothing to do with gameplay and aren't a major issue.
Opening animations don't seem to work; mf-install works for some but just gave me a white background; otherwise it works great!
Game refuses to launch, including after installing xact with protontricks; not sure why. Attempted two versions of Proton including 3.7-8 and 4.2-9; neither helped.
Game refuses to launch, including after installing xact with protontricks; not sure why. Attempted three versions of Proton including 3.7-8 and 4.2-9; and more recently 4.11-6; none helped. I get a black screen with just the mouse, followed by a dump to my desktop.
Smooth run on SATA 3, but put it on an internal. USB 3.0 led to stuttering and just isn't fast enough for it.
Minor audio stuttering in the beginning; seemed to fix itself with time.
Starting it up for the first time took a while; it requires Origin, which now runs well on Proton, to run. So, there was a lot of first-run installation noise to wait through. Additionally, after installing Origin, Steam falsely reports that the game has stopped while Origin seems to have taken over, after a minute or so it recognized that it was running again---be patient and make yourself a snack or something, it's fine.
Pretty much just worked; I haven't tried it without gamemoderun, as I hate launcher apps anyway, but I noticed no degradations.
gamemoderun %command%
Looks like we need to wait; I got a few messages stating that it couldn't updated because it couldn't find a file called "dfhack".
Tried renaming dfhack-run.exe to correct for bug, no luck.
I had "dfhack-run.exe", and that isn't it. Likely just a hiccup, but no luck yet.
Couldn't get to a game window.
Even after installing on both NTFS and ext4, attempting multiple versions of Proton, and even reinstalling Proton in case there was a fault in it, I could not get this game to work.
Apparently I'm not the only person with relatively modern hardware (GTX 1660 with 6 GB GDDR5, just for this) to have trouble running it on Linux. Everything else runs great on Proton. I must disagree with it being "Platinum" for now, and, grudgingly, must boot to Windows to get it to work.
Great game, works as well as it does under Windows.
My last review turned out to be related to a corrupted installation of Proton 5.13; avoid accidentally installing it on an NTFS partition in favor of an ext4. (Wine doesn't get along with NTFS, so neither does Proton.) Now, it runs beautifully.
There were brief pauses on the first play, but they stopped afterward. This implies to me that it was just compiling shaders the first time.
Once you get past the periodic pauses the first time, it runs like a rocket. I have no reason to think that that issue involves Proton.
Origin complains about a folder on launch; but this seems like it's proton confusion and doesn't affect anything. Otherwise flawless.
Crashed after the initial Dolby splash screen.
Running it on Linux native isn't actually an option, as it corrupts save files and crashes to desktop afterward. Last update to "Beta" Linux mode was in 2019 according to a pop-up on launch.
The launcher opens and downloads essential files, but afterwards, right after the "Analyzing" phase, it CTDs.
After replacing the executable with v.16.0.20.1060 it runs flawlessly to the end.
It's advisable to do a clamav scan on the exe first, for safety's sake. Additionally, all you need to replace is the executable, don't bother with a DLL or anything like that. This clearly doesn't qualify for me as working out of the box; cracked files are shady and there's no reason for me to need to use one aside from conspicuous malfunctioning copy protect code.
Worked out of the box.
Entering the player name apparently requires windowed mode; other than that fullscreen shouldn't be a problem.
Only tinker was disabling the overlay to get rid of the activation key--opening the overlay led to a freeze-up. Otherwise, it works well!
Mouse seemed to be frozen on some menus, which still responded perfectly to the keyboard--but I have a Wacom and a number of other devices connected, and it might just involve that.
Opening the Steam Overlay froze the game up and failed to open the overlay. I suspect this is a UPlay thing. However, I don't really need it, and disabling it gets rid of the CD Key popup.
Endless black screens prevent me from beginning to play. Tried GE, too, through 6.0.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
May work for some, doesn't for me.
Started, progressed through splash screens and working menu. However, complete CTD after starting a new game.
Could not get it to go past a black screen, no matter what I did. Unplayable.
Tried the config.ini trick, no luck
Still Doesn't Quite Work
I've added the usual launch tokens, attempted PROTON_USE_D9VK=1, and even installed XBoxLiveLess; but the game will not launch for me. At one point, I managed to get a flicker of a black screen, before being dumped back to my desktop with a nondescript error. We have a way left to go with this one, possibly due to the weird 2008-ish anti-piracy bloatware.
CE freezes on the opening video. Skipping to gameplay, everything looks washed out, frame rate very low, and it CTD'd a moment later.
Not stable enough to engage in
The game had serious issues connecting to X-Box, which was required to reach the initial menu.
Couldn't log in until I switched to experimental from GE, which prevented any gameplay.
The only thing I have not yet been able to complete is Danger Rising.
In "Rogue Agent" on the Danger Rising DLC, the game will freeze before the final fight, requiring a hard close. No idea why; it's happened on two separate systems--one of which is brand new--so it isn't my hardware. Not sure if it happens on Windows too, but this is consistent. Otherwise, it's absolutely perfect.
Initially the main game ran fine; but I couldn't finish the Danger Rising DLC. The last mission would crash before fighting Miller. Using Proton-GE 6.16 fixed it nicely. No degradation of any kind detected at any point, aside from that one CTD.
The Rogue Agent mission can't be completed with standard Proton; but GE fixes it.
It runs almost like it's native.
There were a few incidents where my mainboard fan kicked on without any visible explanation; but this didn't seem to affect performance. It's likely just physics-heavy programming.
The end of mission eight results in a color bar screen, likely a WMF incompatibility? I may try it again after installing WMF with protontricks. Other than that, everything works.
Occasionally, on entering some combat, I get the error message "C:\work\skyfallen\tbm\BMRender\rmode.cpp(4045): DirectX call failed: 1, 1 code=0x80004001 (-2147467263)" followed by a total CTD. This happens very occasionally, and it is still playable if I avoid those specific units; but CTDs are quite inconvenient.
Consistently get a DirectX error in certain parts of the mines, followed by a CTD. Most of the game runs beautifully; but that region effectively needs to be completed on Windows; so for the moment this is game-breaking.
protontricks 214510 d3dx9_41
As discussed before, it needs Direct3D 9 to function properly, or at least one of its libraries... but after that's installed, you can get past the splash screen and really enjoy it.
The freezes kill the magic, and I played it with a Ryzen 7 and an RTX 30, so there's no real excuse. I'm told this also happens on Windows.
Changed multiple DLLs to get it to run at all, as outlined in other reviews.
Frequent freezes mid-gameplay.
Without swapping out DLLs, you get a black screen with sound... which is weird.
This isn't a demanding game, and it isn't hard to emulate, so how SNK keeps getting this stuff wrong is beyond me.
Some brief freezing and stuttering.
I had to downgrade to Proton 4.2 to get it to run; 5.x doesn't even start the game.
Stuck on seemingly endless "Initializing..." screen. Attempted all suggested workarounds; Esync and Wine D3d11 made no difference; disabling D3D11 caused a total failure to start at all.
Works really well as of recent versions of Proton; the experience was as enjoyable as it was on Windows.
Mild crackling the first play; seemed to disappear after that.
I had some mild stutter while playing on Ultra settings; dropping my screen resolution a couple notches seemed to fix this completely. I remember having a similar issue on Windows, so this may not be Proton related at all, and probably isn't an issue with a better graphics card.
Give it a while to cache if you've got some stuttering, after that it's good.
This seems to be cache related; as everything was being loaded there was some unexpected stutter. (Big problem for a Parkour game.) However, as all of the textures were optimized this stutter went away and it was quite playable.
One thing I will note is that if you change your download location for anything on Origin, Origin itself will break. The only solution I've found has been to uninstall and redownload. However, left to its original installation directory, it runs fine.
Origin is having a serious problem loading and committing.
I had it working once, and even beat most of the game; but for whatever the reason, I cannot get Old Man Origin to run on Proton right now. I'm hoping this is fixed, as it was never an issue in the past; but when I finally do get Origin to launch it will spend some time running and then CTD. This is true on two separate machines, including a brand new one and an older one that once ran the game well.
Everything works other than 3DMark, which is apparently very avoidable in-game. Hopefully they'll have that patched soon.
Sometimes the program will refuse to cleanly close.
3DMark, relying on Media Foundation, does not work as of 6.3. I understand that Glorious Eggroll (or the upcoming Proton 6.5) should fix this; but it isn't out yet and I've had difficulties with the mf-install.sh shell script. Otherwise it's perfectly playable.
No sound at all, but given that the audio is screechy old DOS sound anyway, it's relaxing enough to play while listening to Spotify or something else. I don't personally consider this to be a big deal, and it could probably be fixed with a conf file edit.
Only issue I have is with sound.
Worked out-of-the-box just like it originally did, and supported my graphics pad for input! What an unexpected surprise!
My experience with this was good; though I did have to move it to an internal drive. Likely something game related; but compared to internal USB 3.0 just leads to foot-dragging load times. It also seemed to reduce stutter somewhat at higher graphical settings, can't say why. I went with gold instead of platinum, as there are a few far-from-game-breaking issues; when I change display settings, as an example, the game will sometimes freeze up entirely. This does not seem to happen during regular play.
Runs great on 4.11-13, anything more recent and it stops immediately.
Game is very playable and enjoyable.
Comparing my play to what I can find on YouTube, only a few materials seem off. Additionally, I'm getting a pretty significant moiré effect on a lot of the textures, but it's still very enjoyable.
If it doesn't get past the main menu, run with the option "%command% -novideos" and it should work.
This game runs sublimely on Proton, I've beaten it twice on Linux; but as of recently, you need to run it with -novideos to get it to work. Probably some squirrely WMF thing; but everything else actually works better than Windows. (Otherwise, it will CTD on the main menu.)
The video issue is a new problem; it used to work out of the box, but isn't officially Proton-supported yet. I honestly wasn't even aware that there were any videos...
The first time you run the game, the first thing you'll notice is that you're at maybe 1 fps. I know this is discouraging but it's pretty easily fixable, and for good.
Patiently start a new game and go to options (for new players, that's an orange gear icon at the bottom-right, watch for it.) Change your resolution once, to anything you like. The game will restart; after that, you can change it back if you like, it won't drop to 1 fps ever again.
After doing that I've gone through the first six missions with nothing even close to another glitch; if this was fixed, I would rate this game platinum!
As of Proton 6.x, it just plain works!
In the past, I would have a 1 fps frame rate until I changed my monitor resolution; then the game would run fine for life. As of recently, I don't even seem to need to worry about that anymore; it just plain works. Super-Platinum.
FPS seemed pretty low on a 3050.
It's really progressed over the past two years; but as far as I can tell, this game just isn't maintained well enough.
The loading time is unrealistically long for my hardware.
Episodes one and two are playable; but three consistently crashes as it starts. (However, I hear this happens on Windows too; so I'm doubtful as to whether it's a Proton thing.)
Game starts windowed, needs to be set to fullscreen from title bar. (Tested on XFCE and Plasma 5).
Occasional stuttering or slow-down in the middle of a match.
I consistently get a wine error on exiting, but otherwise it seems to exit normally. Playable, and enjoyable, but rough around the edges still.
Game consistently starts in windowed mode, and has to be switched to fullscreen manually.
At certain points in Metro City, the game would start running in slow-mo. This has changed with time, though. I suspect there was background processing going on, which was cached.
Game consistently exits with a Wine error, but it doesn't effect gameplay.
Not very busy, but I did see other players walking around.
Works well and is enjoyable, but has some odd quirks.
It's playable and enjoyable, but it isn't perfect. There are still small textural oddities.
Apparently some of the emissive textures are just black. The game is playable, but it isn't what the developers intended on Proton yet.
On Proton 5, this game runs perfectly. All textures are present, sound is great, game is perfectly responsive, too.
Made it all the way into part two of the first mission, without any graphical or audio anomalies or signs of issues. Controller worked great, but is best configured either from big picture mode or before starting the game. (Steam overlay behaved strangely, and wouldn't let me access the window that had controller settings until I quit; but this isn't a real issue for the game and might happen anyway.)
Linux DosBox with the downloaded game
This game is effectively borked; but still playable if you circumvent Steam.
Had to install dotnet452, and xna40, which took a while; afterward, game ran fine. However, it does need to be quit through system monitor after it's been closed.
Game doesn't properly quit; you need to close it via pkill or system monitor. Other than that, works great.
Runs smoothly, can recommend.
Until EAC is working with Proton, the multiplayer elements are out. However, single-player gameplay was pretty good.
Graphics were initially a little janky, but this seemed to clear up as I continued playing. Likely something going on in the background on first run.
I went ahead and disabled everything on the UPlay overlay. The interface is slow, but it does ultimately work and hopefully this will improve with time. Other than that, no tweaks were necessary on Proton 5.0-7.
The last thing worth mentioning is that the game doesn't always shut down properly; I find myself rooting through ps aux to kill the process. No big deal, but a little annoying.
The UPlay overlay needed to be disabled but other than that the game's performance was very reasonable. Working with the interface was very slow but only really needed to be done once, to turn off the overlay before play. Otherwise, no tweaks were necessary.
The game does not shut down properly. This can be remedied by going into system monitor, task manager, or even ps aux and finding the upc.exe process, and terminating it; this will cause all other processes to individually sort themselves out.
The last thing worth mentioning is that occasionally the game results in a hard freeze, requiring a reboot. (Yes, obnoxious on Linux.) It happens much less frequently when the game is installed on an internal drive, and instead of using your power button you can use the kernel shortcut holding down alt and sysreq, and pressing R, E, I, B, U, S, in that order. It will still induce a reboot, but it will be a much safer soft reboot.
Apparently the same thing occasionally happens on Windows.
%command% uplay://launch/2688/0 -eac_launcher -nosplash
Ubisoft Connect is a disaster. Use its triple bar and go to settings, and turn everything, including its overlay, off. It kills FPS and doesn't even hide itself properly.
Occasionally the game would freeze for a frame or two, in clusters, before returning to normal. This didn't happen in the past, though.
Removing all influence from UC seems to help this issue, but at the end of a mission I got a CTD. It did, thankfully, seem to save first.
This game used to work perfectly, but Ubisoft Connect does not play well. It's also apparently essential. I recommend the above launch options, and disabling all parts of Ubisoft Connect. Additionally, Easy AntiCheat is not patched to handle Linux for it, so it'll have to be off.
As a general rule, disable everything Ubisoft will allow you to, to get maximum performance out of your hardware. Without EAC enabled (I would love it if they would patch this), you can't get multiplayer features anyway.
If you can run it on Windows, it'll work on Linux. Τurn off VSync entirely, and launch it with "+renderAPI 1" for Vulkan instead of OpenGL.
Strange texture flickering that seemed to go away after I had been running the game for a while. Additionally, I had to go into options and turn off VSync, as otherwise there's noticeable graphical lag; it ran fine after that.
This might be because my graphics card is below the recommendation, but I got a CTD after some time playing. It isn't frequent and I recall similar behavior on Windows.
