ZenAge.4863

Hey! Thanks for the response! I can see that in general your package is still maintained from time to time and the structure has not changed much. There are obvious benefits to your package which is why I support it and depended on it for so long 😄 Lately, I have less performance needs and moved to tracking my time in steam, but wondering, if any of your tweaks could be ported to the steam/proton version somehow (via another script)? Even if only 50% of it, that would mean that the GW2 prefix would be slightly better optimized than the default. I know that steam has prefixes for each game/proton version, so there may be an entry point here for your performance tweaks for those new steam Linux users. (I play on -provider portal version, so there could still be benefits for those veterans who want to semi-migrate to steam regardless of the pure steam accounts) I guess there is not much to adjust here regarding your package embedded in my script. I will have a closer look later. I kinda abandoned the project, but want to get it a bit up to date. Not sure how far I'll get. I'm also not so familiar with wine as you are so not sure how much I would be able to contribute, but if ever opportunity arises, happy to help 🙂

Hey everyone! It's nice to see this thread is still going and is a central hub for playing gw2 on linux! I have been investing some time in my old project for gw2taco on linux, and the previous major issue that prevented it from working was due to a shift in APIs in GW2TacO itself, and Vulkan's (apparent) lack of support for DirectComposition. After chatting to the original developer GW2TacO has a fallback to the old API, which I managed to access via disabling dcomp. I am currently focusing on v2.0.0 of gw2taco_linux which will (for now) focus on the old API and my fake transparency tweaks. From the feedback I gathered the main issues with my project were: 1. Unable to start TacO (swapchain creation failed) - fixed with the fallback tweak as of v2 2. Transparency worked but snapping GW2TacO & GW2 window was an issue - I will be experimenting with an automated solution for this. My current aims are: 1. To focus on stabilizing the transparency tweak (which actually works well, when it works lol). 2. To investigate the source code/vulkan to see if we can move to getting TacO to run on the DirectComposition API (in wine/linux)... and potential native wine support. 3. Steam/Proton Support @ArmoredVehicle.2849 I would just like to touch base as it has been a while, but at some point I saw your portable package was abandoned, and now there is once again traction. Can you give me a rough idea of the following so that I can update my project to match your projects current state: 1. Is the portable package still in demand/do you foresee continuing this project? 2. What are the benefits of the portable vs steam proton with some winecfgs/tweaks? (besides needing a steam account) (I am using the -provider Portal launch param) 3. Has any file paths/dirs changed since old releases that might affect my script? ----- I have been following a lot of other GW2TacO alternatives for a while and most focus on rebuilding native ports/using taco paths. I want to try build a compatibility layer for the original project, or at least cause a movement there, but not sure how far I get. From what I remember, the v1.0.0 release added the transparency support and worked for me, even though buggy, and I will try focus on that first, before moving to more native support. I just wanted to touch base here to understand what's been happening last few years since TLDR, haven't been following the threads 🙂 ----- Glad this thread is still alive and a hub for linux users! 😄

yes, and only when using portable package wine binaries. :/I also get 0014:err:winediag:xrandr12_init_modes Broken NVIDIA RandR detected, falling back to RandR 1.0. Please consider using the Nouveau driver instead. thanks for your package btw, running gw2 straight via wine without tweaks runs gw2 at 15-25fps with stutters and with your latest package i get 70-200fps without any fuss :D EDIT: I got it to work by installing libnvidia-glvkspirv:i386 :smirk:

Wondering if someone can help me figure this out. I recently got an upgrade \o/ and can now play gw2 properly and use dxvk. I'm trying to run taco using the portable package binaries but get a lib error. info: Game: GW2TacO.exeinfo: DXVK: v1.8-asyncinfo: Built-in extension providers:info: Win32 WSIinfo: OpenVRinfo: OpenXRwarn: OpenVR: Failed to locate moduleinfo: Enabled instance extensions:info: VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2info: VK_KHR_surfaceinfo: VK_KHR_win32_surfaceThe NVIDIA driver was unable to open 'libnvidia-glvkspirv.so.460.67'. This library is required at run time.warn: Skipping Vulkan 1.0 adapter: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1, 256 bits)warn: DXVK: No adapters found. Please check your device filter settings and Vulkan setup.err: D3D11CreateDevice: No default adapter availablelibnvidia-glvkspirv is installed and it starts fine if I use native wine binaries. Wondering if there is a config or symlink I need for the portable package?

I was following the previous messages, but tbh, im noob with git xD I still don't get how to properly work with branches, merges and don't even know what rebase is. However, as already mentioned, a good place to start is just create the repo and dump the contents with a README, License etc. The only thing is... if there are binaries/libraries that are not yours, I think you are suppose to link them in a special way like submodules. Not sure what the rules are for having WINE's binaries/third party libs in your repo without a clear statement/link to orginal dev/source?

Thanks! ^^, It was a fun project and just evolved over time... I learnt a lot of cool bash skills lol! If you run into issues please create one on gitlab if you can, that way I can respond faster and keep track of issues, someone else might find it helpful too. Also I don't check the forums often, so I might respond slower than on gitlab. Lutris updateI have added lutris support and released gw2taco_linux_v1.1.0. It should be able to run via any of the wine versions you switch to. Also, if you use autostart=true and use run_taco.sh, it will start GW2 via the lutris runner. I have never used it before till now.... but from the previous posts of being unable to login, it seems I have the same issue on v6.0-rc1.

Here's the new GW2Taco Linux v1.0.0 video. (I couldn't set a custom thumbnail QQ) To those who can test, please test and report any issues on GitLab. Enjoy

Thanks, was an interesting/fun side-project :) ( I actually haven't really used gw2taco myself yet lol...) Thank you!! I really appreciate it... I am glad there are people that are interested, as most of the time I feel im working on projects that aren't recognized or followed. With that being said, here is the v1.0.0 release and read the README for updates. Lots of changes, probably going to need a lot of bugfixes, but I have tested it on KDE/Cinnamon and it works, however requires a few "Alt-Tabs" to get the windows synchronised. I hope to automate these minor window tweaks in the next releases. I think I might now actually start using gw2taco lol xD... I was a bit concerned with all the tests I was performing logging in/out into GW2, thought I might get a ban. The end result solution is relatively simple, however I spent a lot of time testing & investigating the issues/solutions.... glad I got to this point at least :P I will update here within the next few days the youtube video if I get to it ;) Including the previous post or two, seems like December is brining us lots of goodies :D

Hey guys, Just a bit of an update for those who are interested about the development of gw2taco_linux. We are currently at v0.9 which includes support for Arch/Deb, KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon & Xfce. I have also added the ability to download & manage other tacopacks from within the installer, and switch between them seamlessly. However, the main reason I am making this post is to announce that I have begun work on implementing experimental transparency! Yes, now we no longer will have to depend on the opacity workaround with the diminished visibility, but rather use transparency as it was designed to be used. The solution was relatively simple, as always, but requires some work before I release an experimental option in v1.0. I did not bother looking for a way to use dwmapi from wine but instead use linux native window managers & compositors. This worked for opacity and also works for transparency. There are various ways this can be implemented (Wayland, OpenGL, Compton, etc) but for simplicity I will start work with compton. (I will probably be migrating the package to picom soon). Transparency: TacoMan: GitLab: https://gitlab.com/namoninja/gw2taco_linux

Clearly you don't ^^,

By your logic, I could just buy a $200k PC and be rocking those FPS... I wonder who will be sub-optimal then. Surely you understand, what I meant by saying the game is inherently un-optimal... yes we can use all these tweaks and upgrade our rigs... but to me "optimal" means I don't have to mess around with all this, as the "optimal" part should be in the base code of the game. Everything else... is an "Enhancement" Furthermore, this is not as simple as choosing "this" because "my game runs xfps better", because you are focusing on 1 point "the game" and leaving out everything else that comes with the OS that runs the game. Which leads back to your optimal argument. Consider two islands. One has everything you would need, generally peaceful mobs running around... the problem is... it lacks Mangoes...Now the other island has TONS of Mangoes... but now... unfortunately... it lacks the other things and there are some dodgy mobs running around... might not sleep too well at night.. Now... if you love Mangoes so much, then yeah... go to that island... my "Optimal choice" however, is to stay on the first island.... couldn't care much for those extra mangoes ;)

lol... I'm getting deja vu... this is oddly familiar to p18... And btw... I'm not sure there is such a thing as "experiencing an optimal experience with GW2." It is inherently un-optimal, no matter what system you are on.

Most of the issues i've had with TacO not starting was:1) TacO starts before you are ingame, then it shuts down because it does not find a mumblelink (you have to be in a loaded map, then start TacO)2) When doing manual starts, the wine prefix is incorrect. it cant find its own resources and crashes (check taco logs)3) same as above, but finds it's resources, starts but cant see gw2 (mumblelink)4) because I was doing too many tests, there were some wine instances open (of taco or something else) and had to kill everything before taco would start5) some missing libs I apologise, this taco thing is a side project and I don't spend much time working on it. I just really wanted to use Taco when doing the skyscale and stumbled upon the workaround. The module was suppose to make it easier to use the workaround and support different Desktop Environments/conditions. However, its not very stable atm, still in the "alpha" stage. I appreciate the feedback and tests. If we can get it to a stable point then I'd be happy because I don't really want to make it too complex and dive too deep. Also don't want this forum to get flooded with "taco" talk lol... I didn't want to start an entirely new thread because it kind of fit well here, but I also don't want it to take over the main point of this thread which is the portable package and optimizations.

It is suppose to include some other stuff like your DE etc. Which should explain why it fails to disable cinnamon. This is again probably because the cd command failed during install so it did not export the other settings. run ./install_taco.sh -> reset -> reinstall, but first edit install_taco.sh and change DIR= like you did for ./run_taco.sh (edit: or download v0.3a) Yip, looks like cd was failing because of the unescaped space in your path. I will patch this in the next version. Thanks for testing, let us know if it works after the fixes. :) So after fixing my wine installation and getting taco working again, I tried out those UI.css styles. Unfortunately I did not get far. It seems like the styles are only for the taco app(interface), and not the taco app(window). This is not managed by those stylesheets (but I guess by dwmapi or linux window managers). It was still fun to mess around though, and thought that maybe I could use it somehow but in general... there is not much we will be able to improve. As long as we are using the opacity workaround and not actual transparency, we will never get the bright & clear GW2/Taco. The best we can do is find the ideal gamma/contrast/opacity levels and maybe tweak the UI style colors a bit. gw2tacowhite.png EDIT: I have updated the installer to v0.3a, fixing the $DIR= path issue & added Arch support for XFCE, KDE & CINNAMON. However, I cannot test it, as im not on arch atm. The settings are all the same except for replacing compton with picom as @Ooops.8694 has pointed out. Needs testing tho.

I remember that "uninformative" error code was actually suppose to be informative because I only put it in one place. It is trying to run part of the script that is specific for the DE that you are using, but cant match the DE variable so throws that error. It throws that error because at line 9 the cd command is failing so all the other vars are failing. The $DIR var is suppose to locate the dir of the taco app folder & not the dir where you are running it from. The function I used worked for me but there might be a better/simpler way. Will check/update. If you want a temporary work around open run_taco.sh and edit DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )" to an absolute path of the gw2taco app something like DIR="/home/user/gw2/gw2taco"

Thanks for link. I had a look and did not find much. In anycase it's probably using the API. Even if I did read the code, there wouldn't be a way I could change/implement it. To be honest, I have been monitoring/found a few threads on reddit asking about running it on linux. However, I don't have a reddit account... might make one soon. I could contact the owner, and he might be willing to add a patch (if he sees the linux adaptation AND its not too much work like adding a line of API code to designate a background color)... but the white background might not work/make it worse... If I sit down and dig deep, I might be able to get TacO working properly with transparency. I found a reddit post with someone claiming he had it working... but when asked how, he didn't mention, just something about DXGI. TacO updated to using dxgi for the transparency sometime ago. Maybe its as simple as messing around with wine libraries/settings... however my setup/os has changed so wine/dxvk is giving me issues with running taco atm. Key elements that I have found are somehow related to transparency:dxgidwmapigdiplusd2d1 I wanted to play around with those wine libs(native/builtin) and changing windows versions etc... but im preoccupied and can't find the time atm for this, plus I have to find out why taco isn't starting with the workaround on the new system. Could you please elaborate what did not work for you/what error showed up? I would like to add a fix to the installer in the next version if possible. P.S Im in the same boat... almost done with skyscale and haven't used TacO xD

So I found some time to sit down and take a look at the script again. Made some major improvements, along with adding KDE & Cinnamon support. KDE was my favourite, it doesn't require installing anything, just setting a kwin rule to activate native opacity for the GW2 window. Cinnamon is the worst so far, it requires installing both compton & openbox and juggling killing/starting processes. Now that there is XFCE, KDE & Cinnamon support, it is more available for testing. Please can you guys try it out and let me know of any problems you run into. I have tested all 3 desktops with success, however some stuff can be quite temperamental, and usually a simple glitch that prevents the whole thing from working. Also for KDE I have set the rule to match both the window class (gw2.exe wine) and/or? the window title (Guild Wars 2), hopefully it registers correctly when testing. Main Post The time has come lol... So glad you went through all that, as I have not been on arch for a while so could not test it there. I have removed arch support in v0.2a so that I can review your work and implement it into the next version. I played a bit early on with xrandr, however moved on to other things as I just messed up all the colors lol.. I am horrible with gamma settings.The main issue atm is the dimming down which is actually caused by the (very) black (not transparent) background of TACO. If we could somehow tweak it to be white/gray instead of black maybe it can improve the visibility even more, but no idea how that would work. Would need to somehow send a signal in wine's dwmapi to change base color OR check TACO's code for where the api calls are made O_O, but I think his app is closed source. Interesting and strange at the same time. I also got blocks but combinations of alt-tab/minimizing always solved it, and setting it to Fullscreen actually caused more of a block for me because then I could not get it minimized lol. Will add this workaround to the FAQ and implement the xrandr/opacity tweaks as defaults in the script settings ^^ Thanks for testing it out, useful info :)

By default some form of browser is set to open webpages/URLs, and almost all distros come with a basic browser. Have you tried installing firefox/setting it as default? Do you still not get redirected? Either your PC does not have a default browsers set (which is strange/unlikely) OR somehow running game through wine isnt responding to calls to open a webbrowser (then a wine issue), or it is actually a GW2 issue where you are simply not been given the option for opening a web browser to enter the code.

From the error, it cant find the wine binary. From your message, I assume you are not using the portable package and using Lutris's wine? If so then I guess that's where the Issue is, as I built that taco module for the portable package. Strange though that everything starts o.o Try the manual approach. Compton should already be installed, so Disable xfwm compositor -> run gw2, run taco, run compton, gw2 ontop. The instructions are in the video.

I think you are right, it should be left to the user... but maybe a mention that they could do something like this (if they looking for that extra fps) would help... I honestly didn't know about openbox until now when messing around with the WMs. You are right, these days the differences are minor... however it also depends on the hardware, so in your setup it might of been minor, but for others (maybe those with low end pcs, or nvidia related issues) it could be quite the improvement... and some some people really go that extra mile for a boost of 1fps xD

Glad to hear someone might have use for this :tongue: I haven't looked into Cinnamon yet, and will start work on KDE soon... however it seems like you are right... after reading some forums Cinnamon's compositor is a core feature and more difficult to turn off... I say "more difficult" because I am sure that somewhere there is a config that can be overridden. I stumbled upon this: Menu button - Preferences - System SettingsSection Preferences: GeneralDisable compositing for full-screen windows: switch it on.Normally you run GW2 with TacO in windowed/full-screen windowed mode. However, because this is a workaround which works with linux compositors, taco might work in full screen... Im not sure yet... and "full-screen windowed" might be seen as "full screen" by cinnamon. You could try those tweaks, in the meantime I will do a bit of digging and add experimental support for cinnamon in the installer/module. :) EDIT:The window manager for cinnamon is called Muffin based on Mutter & Metacity. The compositor is Clutter. I am installing cinnamon now to see if I can find some overrides. EDIT 2:I have managed to get compton working by killing the cinnamon process. However, it makes the desktop almost unusable and creates other issues. Installing Openbox and running that after killing cinnamon did the trick. It's all experimental at this point and not sure what issues might arise... theoretically might even improve performance. Will add this to the installer for testing. Process would go like this: install_taco.sh would install compton (& additionally openbox under the cinnamon option)run_taco.sh would1) kill cinnamon2) run openbox3) run compton4) run gw25) run taco6) on gw2 exit -> kill compton && openbox -> run cinnamon This would simulate enabling/disabling composition without having to relogin/restart pc. Alternatively you can change cinnamon to a different DE to use permanently, but this way its portable. Both Openbox & Compton are lightweight and should have minimal impact on performance (theoretically improving it actually) @ArmoredVehicle.2849 as I dig deeper into these compositors I am noticing that different window managers/compositors affects gaming performance / screen tearing. Maybe we could investigate if using different window managers (ex. openbox) & compositors (ex. compton) and tweaking their configs could improve performance in gw2-wine?

Can we please leave the Windows nonsense out of this thread? I'm a little bit annoyed having to read these posts. This thread is called "Playing Guild Wars 2 on Linux - Performance optimizations and more" there is not one mention of Windows in the title, and no one asked for tests and comparisons on how "it simply runs faster/better on windows", that's a bit obvious. It defeats the purpose of the thread and turns the conversations into debates about Operating Systems. Windows IS a crapfest and a horrible system, and if it works for you then cool, no need to come onto a linux thread and shove it in our face. I am happier to trade those 10fps and keep myself and my system secure and happy, than EVER installing windows. That 10fps loss today will be a 20fps gain tomorrow. Personally I will never dual boot windows, why? because I have no reason to, linux does everything I need it to and better than windows ever could. I can post an entire book on why linux is better, and how windows is broken, but I wont, why? because this isn't the place for this kind of nonsense. IIRC it was already mentioned/requested to keep the Windows vs Linux talk out of this thread. You're welcome to start a new forum if you want to discuss these things, but this thread has a purpose and let's stick to that purpose.

Guild Wars 2 TacO on Linux Ok so this will be the "official" post for the TacO module for @ArmoredVehicle.2849 portable package. This is a workaround, and not an actual implementation of the Aero theme's composition/transparency effects that are required by TacO to run properly. Explanation When launching GW2TacO on Linux (using wine) you encounter a black background and cannot see GW2. This is due to TacO utilizing the Desktop Window Manager API and the Aero theme's composition/transparency effects which is unavailable in Linux. This workaround uses Linux's own window desktop managers & their compositor's window opacity effects. Because we are using Opacity and not Transparency we get diminished results with lower contrast/brightness. By setting our active-window's opacity to slightly lower than the inactive one we can see through it. By setting TacO to always be below (inactive-window) and GW2 always on top (active-window), we are able to go around the BlackTaco issue, although with diminished clarity compared to using transparency. Different desktop environments on Linux come with different Window Managers/Compositors. Therefore the workaround will be slightly different depending on your distribution. If your distributions native compositor provides active-opacity then it's just a matter of changing the opacity level. However if the compositor lacks this feature (or you are getting horrible performance), then installing Compton (a great lightweight compositor) is your next best option. The provided module attempts to make this process easier for a wide variety of configurations and easy integration into ArmordVehicle's Portable Performance Package. Overview Installer Method NOTE This project has moved to GitLab, please find up to date info there. Latest Release Changelog If you are having difficulties with the installer have a look at the FAQ / Troubleshooting or the Development Board / Issues for any active issues. Alternatively, if you do not find your specific issue, then you can Submit a new issue. Try to include as much detail as possible:-> Describe what happened or if you noticed any errors/etc-> Provide the output of the terminal-> Provide the latest entries from the gw2taco.log-> Provide info from the settings.conf file

I like user friendliness ^^ I think the flushing option is better, minimal disturbances than a ticking in the background (besides there aren't that many shaders after you've loaded most of them. The bulk of work gets done on game launch when it has to load all the shaders into the ramdrive, but that takes like 2-3 secs (on my old hardware) that's not even close to logging in to your account. So user won't notice anything apart from having to enter that sudo password. Might be possible to work around this by adding the mount cmd for user to sudoers file, so you would only need to ask for the sudo password once. However, this might not be good for security as the user account will now be able to use the mount command without a password. Maybe if we could get only the script to run without sudo. Could try something like echo "$USER ALL=NOPASSWD:/path/to/script" | (sudo su -c 'EDITOR="tee" visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/customscript') I also noticed, that eventually the ramdrive needs to be a bit larger (depending on how much of the game you've visited). I started off with a 64mb ramdrive and it was reaching it's peak, so I bumped it up to 128mb. I think that one will last for a while. Although I end up flushing the cache folder to reset the shaders sometimes because my game goes through its mood swings :P Another thing I've noticed (not sure if this is true) but I run on minimal graphics with shaders at low and shadows at none. If I increase the shaders to medium or high, then it feels like it starts caching shaders again... it makes me think that for each level of graphic settings there are more quantity/complexity of shaders that need to be cached.