Playing Guild Wars 2 on Linux - Performance optimizations and more.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i'm using pipewire on usb audio and its fine. there shouldn't be any kind of audio conflict with another application as this points to them possibly using different sound servers for some reason.

[xAcid.9305]

Okay my issue is magically fixed. I nuked my GW2 config/prefix, reinstall Lutris and downgrade Wine back to 7.22
Which one fixed the issue? I have no idea... 💩

Spoiler

Ok it seems like GW2 or it prefix config is forcing Alsa instead of Pulse even after I set default sound to Pulse. Is there a hidden config that i missed?

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by xAcid.9305

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 6/25/2023 at 2:36 AM, Veprovina.4876 said:

I have 32 GB RAM, it can hog all the resources it wants lol.
I'd take that over not being able to log in to my computer any day. 🙂

I have 32gb ram, KDE, chromium has 315 tabs open. Talk to me about 'hogs'. No swap.

 

And no problems to log in. But I am also not using a 'userfriendly' userhating mess like fedora, ubuntu&co, but gentoo.

[Veprovina.4876]

29 minutes ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I have 32gb ram, KDE, chromium has 315 tabs open. Talk to me about 'hogs'. No swap.

 

And no problems to log in. But I am also not using a 'userfriendly' userhating mess like fedora, ubuntu&co, but gentoo.

Well, i used Arch with KDE, no swap either, but the distro has nothing to do with the DE you use. So, using a "userfriendly" userhating messes wouldn't have made a difference. 😉

Besides, most of my probelms were with SDDM with logins, KDE had problems with Wayland, its own applets (the audio applet wouldn't recognize my sources, yet they worked and were present in the settings, the taskbar would constantly change icon sizes, and activities would sometimes crash, to name a few issues.

IT was just a janky experience all around, and not something i'd expect from a usable daily desktop.

I'm happy you like KDE and that it works for you, but your experience isn't everyone elses, and KDE just isn't as stable for everyone.

So resource hog or not - gnome just works, and i have 0 problems with it.

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

I'm now often getting screen tearing in the middle of the screen. Goes away for some time if I open and close the Steam overlay or switch back and forth between virtual desktops. Goes away on its own sometimes, even. Probably another Plasma oddity...

Edited July 1, 2023 by Hell Nirvana.9045

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

20 minutes ago, Hell Nirvana.9045 said:

I'm now often getting screen tearing in the middle of the screen. Goes away for some time if I open and close the Steam overlay or switch back and forth between virtual desktops. Goes away on its own sometimes, even. Probably another Plasma oddity...

triple buffering is controlled at the driver level, the desktop can't do anything about tearing on its own. make sure you look up how to enable it for your specific graphics driver.

[Sina.9208]

On 7/2/2023 at 12:33 AM, Hell Nirvana.9045 said:

I'm now often getting screen tearing in the middle of the screen. Goes away for some time if I open and close the Steam overlay or switch back and forth between virtual desktops. Goes away on its own sometimes, even. Probably another Plasma oddity...

Run 'qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend' to temporarily turn off the compositor. See if that helps, if it does not, then experiment with fps limits. (the sweetspot for my 60hz monitor is 47-48)

[xAcid.9305]

Is there a way to link Steam shader cache to Lutris/Wine? My shader cache kept compiling everytime i start the game.

[DemiurgChaos.8643]

Why don't work  WvW weekly achivment Tower Guardian, my balist destroy enemis catapult, and I  didn't got achivment? 😡 

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

On 7/2/2023 at 1:33 AM, Hell Nirvana.9045 said:

I'm now often getting screen tearing in the middle of the screen. Goes away for some time if I open and close the Steam overlay or switch back and forth between virtual desktops. Goes away on its own sometimes, even. Probably another Plasma oddity...

Even opening the world map seems to eliminate the tearing 🤔

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

44 minutes ago, DemiurgChaos.8643 said:

Why don't work  WvW weekly achivment Tower Guardian, my balist destroy enemis catapult, and I  didn't got achivment? 😡 

That is because qualifying for defence means you have to kill another player in the area 😞

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

21 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

Run 'qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend' to temporarily turn off the compositor. See if that helps, if it does not, then experiment with fps limits. (the sweetspot for my 60hz monitor is 47-48)

I've experimented with allowing applications to block compositing for a few days. Seems to work (even let's me utilise Adaptive Sync), but the blocking doesn't seem consistent. Sometimes compositing stays on when the game is launched, other times it re-enables itself (inconsistently...) if I switch between virtual desktops.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Hell Nirvana.9045

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 7/3/2023 at 9:47 PM, Sina.9208 said:

Run 'qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend' to temporarily turn off the compositor. See if that helps, if it does not, then experiment with fps limits. (the sweetspot for my 60hz monitor is 47-48)

dunno, for me it automatically turns of compositing as soon as I start the game (via lutris). Popup even informs me about it. There is also a key shortcut, but I forgot it - not having to use it in years.

[zistenz.1945]

Currently there's an issue with all the new-ish AMD cards and kernel 6.4.1 and single monitor setups (it seems multi monitors doesn't affected), so if anyone has sudden performance degradation after an upgrade recently, try these:

• Adjust/lower the monitor refresh rate (it may not work).
• Try to force the good MCLK value via console (see the workaround in the comments, but it may not work).
• Downgrade the kernel to 6.3.9 and wait for the fix (always works).

[Veprovina.4876]

1 hour ago, zistenz.1945 said:

AMD cards and kernel 6.4.1 and single monitor setups

Oh there's more than just this issue with 6.4.1, i had to install and switch to an LTS arch kernel because the new one had a kernel panic, and when it didn't, there was no signal coming out of the DP or HDMI... Dual monitors. 

Did someone make a commit or something without asking people like Manjaro people did to ARM version? Linus is going to be pissed lol.

I'll use the LTS one for a while before they sort this out.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[Samurro.1463]

Can somebody say something in regards to the steamversion? Is the performance the same or even better on the steam version?

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, Samurro.1463 said:

Can somebody say something in regards to the steamversion? Is the performance the same or even better on the steam version?

If you mean Lutris vs Steam... Lutris version didn't run half the time for me so Steam version is definitely an improvement! 

[Public Display Name.7694]

Months ago, I attempted to fix the arenanet direct x whatever patch issue which bricked my client/cut me off playing, right during the lion statuettes weeks, due to that, I missed out on those (thanks anet, could've waited a week or two, then again, linux user problems are not anet's problems as it's not officially supported, I get that). I checked here to get some answers, and I did get answers, namely, my drivers are outdated, too outdated for GW2 apparentely, despite it being an old modded GW1 engine, strange thing is that it can play that actiblizz mmo, with no problems (I was just testing some thing, no way would I ever give money to that nasty company/corporation, eww. I just wanted to gouge how far outdated my drivers were to see if maybe it was a broken client issue), user (@zistenz.1945) told me that my Vulkan couldn't detect my gpu (I posted an info log error dump in the hopes that someone more tech savvy could see what I don't understand) despite it being compatible with DX11/12/Vulkan (Thank (@zistenz.1945) you for that, I wasn't aware of my outdated stuff) this confused me because other games had no such problems, I was instructed to copy&paste ~$ vulkaninfo | grep -i "version"  on the terminal, got this:

Vulkan Instance Version: 1.1.70
VK_LAYER_MANGOHUD_overlay (Vulkan Hud Overlay) Vulkan version 1.2.135, layer version 1
VK_LAYER_LUNARG_standard_validation (LunarG Standard Validation Layer) Vulkan version 1.0.70, layer version 1
    apiVersion     = 0x402080  (1.2.128)
    driverVersion  = 83886088 (0x5000008)
    VK_KHR_sampler_ycbcr_conversion     : extension revision  1

After that I made some half-asssed attempts at updating/upgrading my drivers, well, here is where the micro$oft's market share for a reason part comes in, it's not very intuitive or simple and it makes one feel like the first time one types "about:config" on a FF address bar and get that warning message, it's not a "few clicks away" deal. I know, I knew what I was getting myself into (or at least I thought so) by running linux, and how an answer/solution for one may not work for another, for a while, every other day of every other week, I would spend no more then ~half~ an hour trying to find solutions and applying them, nothing worked, still on an outdated version of both the gpu and the vulkan drivers.

Seems that a linux mint 19 + a 5.4.0 is "too old" for amd gpu, mesa & vulkan updates. There is also a supposed missing "GLIBC_2.28", which cannot be upgraded/updated, would require me to back-up all my data (just in case, you never know with linux) and install a linux mint 20/21/22, which unfortunately for me, I can't do due to not enough space at the moment.

Log for Guild Wars 2 (wine):

(wine:25978): GStreamer-WARNING **: 05:56:38.494: Failed to load plugin '/home/redacted/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/lutris-7.2-2-x86_64/lib64/gstreamer-1.0/libgstlibav.so': /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by /home/redacted/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/lutris-7.2-2-x86_64/lib64/libavformat.so.58)

(wine:25978): GStreamer-WARNING **: 05:56:38.536: Failed to load plugin '/home/redacted/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/lutris-7.2-2-x86_64/lib64/gstreamer-1.0/libgstshm.so': /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by /home/redacted/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/lutris-7.2-2-x86_64/lib64/gstreamer-1.0/libgstshm.so)


Same reason I haven't gone with steam (something I really prefer not to, I don't trust them).



NEVERMIND!

As I tinker and tamper around the configuration while writting this, it occured to me trying out adding a -dx9 line on the Configure -> Arguments. It failed. But, after going to Configure -> Runner options -> Enable DXVK/VKD3D [OFF], now it does work, the game finally fking works and I was able to log in for the first time in months (since the Black Lion Requisition Mission weeks). kitten, would've thought all I had to do was this specific thing, this is why I don't like sort of things, not only does one have to headram into the problem wall till it works (those who aren't tech savvy enough to figure these things out, that is), there are specific bricks in said problem wall that are the ones needed to be head rammed into to do the trick, good fun/luck and patience figuring out which one by accident/luck/scraps of hints scattered throughout the internet!

I have now been playing, well, moving around for a while, just to check if the game works, and so far, other then no longer having that DXVK/VKD3D FPS counter on the top-left, the game is seemingly running at 60fps in the SPvP mists lobby zone, I do feel that I'll probably need to tinker with the configurations in order to come up with better optimizations for this dx9 band-aid solution.

Bah, had I tried this months ago... kitten. You may be wondering:

"Why is he posting all of this then? If he got the game running, no need to spam the thread with all this crap."

Well, you would be right, I just thought I'd pay back to the linux community on this forum playing this game, just in case someone out there like me ran into the same issues with this game in a similar situation and computer build (outdated drivers apparently) as mine, for the sake of documentation, how all it took was to disable DXVK/VKD3D and add a -dx9 line in Arguments, Wine version = lutris-7.2-2x86_64 (if anyone would wonder about that)

I know it's not an optimal solution, but it's something at least (at least until anet somehow finds a way to fk it up).



Also one more thing, @SoftFootpaws.9134  Posted April 24 (edited):
"What's the information on your operating system? I couldn't find it in your original post, though maybe I'm just blind since there was alot to skim through. "

"You should install Steam even if you don't use it, because its a good way to make sure your system has all the things by forcing the package manager to pull them in. Installing it will bring in anything that you're missing for running games except for the hardware drivers themselves."


Thank you for both the information on what steam does forcing the package manager to get the necessary things needed, I did not know it could do that, and for trying to help me out (at least I presume that was the intend of asking me for information on my operating system), I appreciate it, excuse me I didn't reply back, I had just gotten burned out of trying to make the game work and had sort of quit and dropped off this whole thing despite me saying that I would regularly monitor this thread for possible solutions.

[zistenz.1945]

On 7/5/2023 at 7:02 PM, zistenz.1945 said:

Currently there's an issue with all the new-ish AMD cards and kernel 6.4.1 and single monitor setups (it seems multi monitors doesn't affected), so if anyone has sudden performance degradation after an upgrade recently, try these:

• Adjust/lower the monitor refresh rate (it may not work).
• Try to force the good MCLK value via console (see the workaround in the comments, but it may not work).
• Downgrade the kernel to 6.3.9 and wait for the fix (always works).

6.4.2 seems okay again, I don't have any problems (+ Mesa 23.1.3).

[Veprovina.4876]

Can confirm. I tried 6.4.2 after the 6.4.1 kernel panic and its fine again.

[Noxin.9276]

I don't know if it helps anyone but I wrote about my experiences getting guildwars 2 to nigh-native performance (1440p running 45-60 cap in metas on old hardware), at least in my case - I posed my experience in the guides forum. Its probably super simple for most of you, but I dunno if it could help anyone else out with the struggle or isolate the cause on your distro/setup.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

link?

[Nortes.5692]

20 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

link?

I  suppose this

 

[Public Display Name.7694]

On 7/8/2023 at 5:05 AM, Public Display Name.7694 said:

As I tinker and tamper around the configuration while writing this, it occurred to me trying out adding a -dx9 line on the Configure -> Arguments. It failed. But, after going to Configure -> Runner options -> Enable DXVK/VKD3D [OFF], now it does work, the game finally fking works and...

Aaaand IT'S GONE!

Adding a -dx9 line in arguments no longer works, bravo anet, you've gone done it once again.

I freaking knew it would be a short lived thing, didn't expect it would be over so soon, figured 'till the expansion drops but hahah nope.

Oh well, that's it.

On 7/8/2023 at 5:05 AM, Public Display Name.7694 said:

I know it's not an optimal solution, but it's something at least (at least until anet somehow finds a way to fk it up).

Really speedrunning my prophecy, huh anet? From July 8 to July 19. So much for that.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

13 minutes ago, Public Display Name.7694 said:

Aaaand IT'S GONE!

Adding a -dx9 line in arguments no longer works, bravo anet, you've gone done it once again.

I freaking knew it would be a short lived thing, didn't expect it would be over so soon, figured 'till the expansion drops but hahah nope.

Oh well, that's it.

Really speedrunning my prophecy, huh anet? From July 8 to July 19. So much for that.

this sounds like vulkan just isn't working on your system? enabling dx9 and disabling vulkan would've just made wine use opengl and csmt, which is super oldschool (the first vulkan gpus were from 2011 or so, i think), so i imagine there's something serious going on here.

Edited July 19, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134