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

[zistenz.1945]

So, I did an upgrade today, and somehow it is working now: pixman-0.43 only (no lib32-pixman), GE-Proton 8.25, Steam launcher as a non-Steam game. At first it had freezed my KDE Wayland, but after a reset it's okay. Weird...

[PzTnT.7198]

Pixman 0.43.0-2 has now been released and the issue is fixed.

[mozlima.4015]

I need to enable a compositor like Picom and disable the 'Disable desktop effects' option in Lutris when using Intel with modesetting on Xorg

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

Judging by the recent last pages, it appears the pixman library was causing the freezes. I guess I was never able to reproduce it on my end is cause I'm running it on an old system where it isn't affected (libpixman is at 0.34.0).

Could anyone confirm if my package works fine with the fixed libpixman? I'm in the process of updating the Wine base package.

 

[PzTnT.7198]

Version 0.43.0-2 and the now current 0.43.2 both work fine on my end at least.

[zistenz.1945]

19 hours ago, ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

Could anyone confirm if my package works fine with the fixed libpixman? I'm in the process of updating the Wine base package.

Confirmed, pixman-0.43 without lib32-pixman still freezes, the launcher needs both to function properly.

[rotten.9753]

Reshade will not work on Linux, correct?

[PzTnT.7198]

9 hours ago, rotten.9753 said:

Reshade will not work on Linux, correct?

While i have not fiddled around with it much myself i know there are alternatives like vkBasalt. I should look into setting that one up sometime myself. 

It is also possible to get Reshade itself working from what i can find by using winetricks/protontricks to enable "d3dcompiler_47" 

Edited February 1 by PzTnT.7198

[rotten.9753]

2 hours ago, PzTnT.7198 said:

While i have not fiddled around with it much myself i know there are alternatives like vkBasalt. I should look into setting that one up sometime myself. 

It is also possible to get Reshade itself working from what i can find by using winetricks/protontricks to enable "d3dcompiler_47" 

Well, I'm only interested in removing bloom without disabling all the post-processing. I naively tried using reshade with addon loader (addons/reshade/dxgi.dll) or normally (d3d11.dll in the root dir) but in both cases I have a crash during startup with invalid memory address (0xffff ffff).

[Berobad.4536]

If it's d3d11.dll then set d3dcompiler_47 to native and d3d11 to native,bultin in winecfg.    (winetricks/protontricks will do the first one automatically when installing d3dcompiler_47)   

Or start the game with this environmental variable set: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3dcompiler_47=n;d3d11=n,b"

[rotten.9753]

52 minutes ago, Berobad.4536 said:

If it's d3d11.dll then set d3dcompiler_47 to native and d3d11 to native,bultin in winecfg.    (winetricks/protontricks will do the first one automatically when installing d3dcompiler_47)   

Or start the game with this environmental variable set: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3dcompiler_47=n;d3d11=n,b"

Frankly, it appears reshade works fine without that but the problem is that adding a single reshade addon like https://github.com/FransBouma/ShaderToggler cause crash at startup.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I am using reshade for ages. It just works. Stable. No problems. No performance impact that is noticable. 

There are installers that take care of the files and links. Afterwards make sure this exists in the guild wars 2 directory:

3d11.dll -> ~/.local/share/reshade/reshade/5.8.0/ReShade64.dll
 

[rotten.9753]

5 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I am using reshade for ages. It just works. Stable. No problems. No performance impact that is noticable. 

There are installers that take care of the files and links. Afterwards make sure this exists in the guild wars 2 directory:

3d11.dll -> ~/.local/share/reshade/reshade/5.8.0/ReShade64.dll
 

"Vanilla" reshade works for me just fine, it's just that adding any reshade addon like ShaderToggler_v121.zip cause crashes at startup. I'm only interested in removing bloom from low post processing preset just to not get blind.

[draconicrose.6213]

Has anyone had any issues with getting shift + key keybinds to actually trigger the skills? It's intermittent and it's only happening in GW2. I would also appreciate ideas of what to look into, if there are any configurations that might affect the keyboard or something.

[xAcid.9305]

On 2/2/2024 at 1:59 PM, rotten.9753 said:

"Vanilla" reshade works for me just fine, it's just that adding any reshade addon like ShaderToggler_v121.zip cause crashes at startup. I'm only interested in removing bloom from low post processing preset just to not get blind.

https://github.com/4lex4nder/ReshadeEffectShaderToggler Works for me but you need to find the bloom shader manually. I only use to exclude the UI from some effects. 

[Dovahkiin from HighRock.46]

On 2/2/2024 at 1:25 AM, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I am using reshade for ages. It just works. Stable. No problems. No performance impact that is noticable.

Same here, the only difference is I extract files from reshade exe file with p7zip and manually put them in the right place. No issues at all (Debian, NVidia 545)

[ZenAge.4863]

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! 😄

Edited February 6 by ZenAge.4863

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

On 2/6/2024 at 6:31 PM, ZenAge.4863 said:

 @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?
 

Hey, to answer your questions basically:

1.  As far as demand goes I can't really tell how big it is. Lutris/Steamplay have made it very easy to play on Linux.   I'd say the project is mature enough to a point where there won't be as frequent releases. I'll still update the Wine base version and components such as DXVK.

2. In my package I disable/enable certain features to maximize game performance (eg: All forms of log outputs which might reduce game performance are disabled.  The package is fully portable and keeps all config in its' own folder).  My aim is to provide a package that can run on any modern distro.

3. I've modified the Arcdps install scripts last I recall, but everything else is still mostly the same.

 

Should you encounter any issues or wish to make any additions to make my package feel free to chime in 🙂

I understand the project is not on Github,  but most of the configuration is in the "bin/user_*" scripts.  The rest is basically a self compiled - slightly customized Wine staging build (with some additional patches borrowed from wine-tkg).

[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 🙂

Edited February 16 by ZenAge.4863

[eleven.2351]

Hopefully not too late to the topic but..

I've recently installed steam and Guild Wars 2 on Ubuntu 22.04.

Added the provider portal, shaders downloaded normally etc, however whenever I run the game, the FPS just stays below 10 and I cannot figure out what is causing it. The Nvidia drivers are up to date, I am using Proton GE (Tried with both experimental and older versions) and always the same FPS issue where it just won't move. The same system (dualboot) is perfectly running GW2 on Windows. Any ideas what might be causing this?

[aegris.3175]

well..any of *buntu  can eat as memory that processor time so) ...need to smoke on mans XD  .try to play with lutris presets

[Tucci.7360]

On 3/8/2024 at 11:42 AM, eleven.2351 said:

Hopefully not too late to the topic but..

I've recently installed steam and Guild Wars 2 on Ubuntu 22.04.

Added the provider portal, shaders downloaded normally etc, however whenever I run the game, the FPS just stays below 10 and I cannot figure out what is causing it. The Nvidia drivers are up to date, I am using Proton GE (Tried with both experimental and older versions) and always the same FPS issue where it just won't move. The same system (dualboot) is perfectly running GW2 on Windows. Any ideas what might be causing this?

First step is to check if the Nvidia video drivers are actually being used. In the terminal type command nvidia-smi
The output should show the version of Nvidia drivers, something like 550.xx.xx.

Also, little trick if you run Steam through the Terminal with command Steam
there will be a log of what Steam is doing posted in Terminal, which you can look for errors.

[Sina.9208]

Need more info.

What are you using to run GW2?   (Steam, Bottles, Lutris etc)

What is your GPU setup, is this a laptop with a dedicated nvidia gpu that sits unused most of the time?

----

Nm, you are talking about Lutris presets. Yes, please do not use the Lutris community installer to run GW2.

Install the Bottles flatpak, make a default gaming bottle & run the GW2 exe from that bottle to test what's what.  (or even just install Steam & run GW2.exe as a third party steam game, though this is worse than Bottles)

 

 

 

Edited March 16 by Sina.9208

[zistenz.1945]

PSA: There's a KDE 6 (6.0.2 still has it) + XWayland bug (vga type doesn't matter) that appears in almost every 3D fps/tps game (bugreport). The camera controls are totally goes wrong, the camera shoots up to the sky or towards the ground, and the character just flipping around in one place. It seems this happens when the game could not grab properly the cursor. Currently there's no fix yet. This is a KDE6+XW-only bug, any other combinations, even KDE6+X11 works as before.

GW2 workarounds:

1. On the character selection screen right click a few times and try to rotate your toon. It should smooth out after a few try, then the game will have no problems. This usually works for me.

2. Or use "gamescope --force-grab-cursor %command%" in the launcher. This requires the gamescope package.

[Kanok.3027]

So, applied the new update, but can't seem to access the gem store or the trading post, but gold conversion tab seems to be working just fine? Anyone else experiencing this? Was working fine before the update.

• Lutris: wine-ge-8-26_x86_64
• Debian 12
• KDE 5.27.5