How to setup GW2 on linux (after 19/7)

[oldkat.1075]

I don't play all that much anymore but got back into the game today and it didnt work on linux (the only experience i have).

 

I looked over the previous linux_forum_thread and although it has plenty of information it is mostly just a mix of experiences and less focus on a solution, and that will be the goal of this post.

 

Some considerations before starting:

    - i have gw2 working at both machines with gentoo and arch but  i will provide instruction to only arch/pacman because in gentoo i use my own tree with my own ebuilds to compile wine etc ...

    - i only have amd cards but i dont believe there is any difference to nvida ones since the problems are within the software layer and not drivers

    - as a shortcut to installing the needed 32 bit libraries you can just install wine-staging with "pacman -S wine-staging", this will install wine-staging and its package dependencies, after that i would advice removing wine (leaving the dependencies) because that version is not patched and it wont work and if you set and incorrect PATH you will be using the system wide version  (that pacman just installed) while thinking that you are using the correct one, so to make life a little better just "pacman -R wine-staging" and keep the lib32 dependencies

    - make sure you have the necessary lib32 drivers installed, if you use nvidia they will already be there (almost 100% sure on this but i dont have nvidia cards), if you use open source amd drivers you will need lib32-vulkan-radeon and lib32-mesa that you can get with "pacman -S lib32-mesa lib32-vulkan-radeon"

 

After i testing for a couple of hours i basically found 2 problems that were the reasons for the crashes, they are both independent from one another so lets start with the simpler one to fix:

 

a) tls support

it seems the new coherentui version requires tls (most likely for https) and some distros (both arch and gentoo suffered from this) dont install 32 bit library for tls support, the fix is easy just install lib32-gnutls with something like:

 

pacman -S lib32-gnutls

 

b) child window support

this is the bigger problem, not wanting to bore you with the technical details a feature is required of wine that is not in main or a staging patch, there is an old patch that was merged into the proton wine fork in this commit, and this one (the commit one) can be merged into modern wine (after staging patches)(i tried this in gentoo and it work no problem with wine-staging), but if you dont want to have this patching/compiling work you can go with the builds at proton_ge (anything above 21 should work) since they all have the patch.

using this builds was already recommended by other people but it didnt work for some (me included), after reading the code it became apparent that the reason is patches manages surfaces, long story short it uses x11 extensions that do not come as wine-staging dependencies, and the way wine works can be resumed to "if i cant find it just 'fixme' and move along" in an attempt to make it work, this makes somethings work even when not everything is implemented but it also makes errors harder to debug, anyway,  the fix is easy enough it will require 2 extra libraries in order to make the patch work, to get them just go with:

 

pacman -S lib32-libxcomposite lib32-libxinerama

 

this setup (of proton_ge) can either be use with lutris or you can write a simple bash script where you:

    - export PATH to the ../bin/ folder inside the wine distribution

    - export WINEPREFIX to where you want it to be generated

    - set other configurations for DXVK and WINE, like ESYNC etc ... as you please

    - run the executable

 

i personally have a script for this but thats irrelevant for the problems themselfs, and it required zero alteration after the above fixes.

 

i haven't read the scripts offered on the previous packages of wine from the other linux thread in the forum, but i would guess that if you fix the PATH to the new wine (patched) they will very likely work just fine, in case you want an example to copy from.

 

after setting up a wine that as the patch (as indicated above) and fixing the referred dependencies gw2 works fine, no problem on different machines and distros.

 

i hope this helps and if anyone finds anything to add pls do.

 

 

ty for your time.

 

bn

[oldkat.1075]

Tested the TP for a while no memory leek so far and no crashes, will keep testing

[Evermore.5649]

Hmmm I've installed everything you listed here. Still crashing before I even get to the login screen 😞

 

Quote

Assertion: Launcher: Browser crashed
File: D:\Perforce\Live\NAEU\v2\Code\Gw2\Game\Launcher\LauncherCoherent.cpp(2554)
App: Gw2-64.exe

 

Arch

AMD gpu

lutris-GE-Proton7-23

dxvk 1.10.2

 

Update:

Enabling Windowed (virtual desktop) gets me to the login screen, however after pressing play I get a very generic crash:
 

Quote

 

*--> Crash <--*
Exception: c0000005  
Memory at address 00000000`00000000 could not be written
App: Gw2-64.exe
Pid: 268
BaseAddr: 0000000140000000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 131907
When: 2022-07-30T15:40:19Z 2022-07-30T16:40:19+01:00
Uptime:   0 days  0:00:09
Flags: 0
DumpFile: Crash.dmp

*--> System <--*

 

 

Update 2:

Deleted every file except for Gw2.exe, re-ran the launcher and now I was able to play. What the heck!

 

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk xD

 

Update 3:

Literally haven't touched anything and now I'm back to the initial error. I give up.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Evermore.5649

[Aleika.6137]

19 hours ago, oldkat.1075 said:

 

b) child window support

this is the bigger problem, not wanting to bore you with the technical details a feature is required of wine that is not in main or a staging patch, there is an old patch that was merged into the proton wine fork in this commit, and this one (the commit one) can be merged into modern wine (after staging patches)(i tried this in gentoo and it work no problem with wine-staging), but if you dont want to have this patching/compiling work you can go with the builds at proton_ge (anything above 21 should work) since they all have the patch.

 

That does not seem to work for me, adding that commit diff as user patch to wine-staging-7.13 in gentoo does not work as half the changes to vulkan.c fail to apply. What version of wine-staging are you using and what exactly does your patch look like?

[Zuflus.4382]

Can't say I'm really understanding this. Why am I playing Pacman all of a sudden when I do the commands here? I presume this post is to get Gw2 to work again after 19/07. 

 

The launcher for Gw2 just crash for me now, but worked a week ago.  

[garpu.6210]

Quote

- i have gw2 working at both machines with gentoo and arch but  i will provide instruction to only arch/pacman because in gentoo i use my own tree with my own ebuilds to compile wine etc ...

 

From the top post.  Probably the easiest way is to try proton with Steam. (at least in my case.) There are other options that allegedly work for Lutris, but I don't use it.

See also:

 

Edited July 31, 2022 by garpu.6210

[Addicted.2456]

I'm wondering why no one using the Lutris installer. https://lutris.net/games/guild-wars-2/

 

It works perfectly since the package was updated.

[Kelytha.6832]

17 hours ago, Zuflus.4382 said:

Can't say I'm really understanding this. Why am I playing Pacman all of a sudden when I do the commands here? I presume this post is to get Gw2 to work again after 19/07. 

 

The launcher for Gw2 just crash for me now, but worked a week ago.  

'pacman' in this context is the package manger of Arch Linux. If you're using a different distribution you'll have to figure out how to install the required libraries that are mentioned on your distro.

[Niagara.2715]

On 7/31/2022 at 8:17 PM, Addicted.2456 said:

I'm wondering why no one using the Lutris installer. https://lutris.net/games/guild-wars-2/

It works perfectly since the package was updated.

 

Still doesn't work for me sadly, even after the DXVK update, though it works perfectly for other MMOs I play (I've been using it for years).

Edited August 2, 2022 by Niagara.2715

[Keyur.2587]

On 8/1/2022 at 4:17 AM, Addicted.2456 said:

I'm wondering why no one using the Lutris installer. https://lutris.net/games/guild-wars-2/

Until the patch I had no reason to use anything other than wine-staging + dxvk. Did not need any extra components to be installed with winetricks.

 

This is the 1st time I have used lutirs and all I did was use it to to grab lutrus-GE-Proton7-24 then copied that /opt/lutris/ so it is easy to access. Trying that version with fsync got me back into game but I am noticing input lag I was not noticing with wine staging with esync. The person I play with has an identical computer and has the same complaint.

 

Seeing if I notice any different between esync and fsync will be my excuse to play today.

[TheMagickDoll.7594]

That switch to using wine-staging did the trick!  Thank you suggestion!