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

[Sakiri.4809]

ok so I deleted the bottle and decided to remake it to see if that fixed it.

Well it launches now but it's redownloading the entire game again. -_- And I can't seem to change where it downloads to, I'd have preferred it on my second SSD.

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

I did that earlier, it ran just as badly as the lutris version did. 15 fps everywhere. 

Then you have a clue to what the problem is.

Since every wine/proton you tried runs badly for GW2, the problem must be either with drivers, or something else.

What GPU are you using, and what drivers are loaded for it? For instance, are you running NVidia, but using nuoveau driver instead of proprietary?

What distro are you using?

What desktop environment and what protocol? Wayland or X11? Yes, that matters. For instance, on KDE with X11, i'd get massive frame skipping that looked like 15 FPS. On KDE Wayland, i'd get ok FPS, but other parts of the system didn't work. On Gnome Wayland, games ran buttery smooth, but not on Gnome X11.

When i switched to Nvidia, Gnome no longer worked properly, neither did KDE, and i switched to Xfce4 (x11) because both mutter and kwin compositors had issues displaying games.

 

[Sakiri.4809]

35 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Then you have a clue to what the problem is.

Since every wine/proton you tried runs badly for GW2, the problem must be either with drivers, or something else.

What GPU are you using, and what drivers are loaded for it? For instance, are you running NVidia, but using nuoveau driver instead of proprietary?

What distro are you using?

What desktop environment and what protocol? Wayland or X11? Yes, that matters. For instance, on KDE with X11, i'd get massive frame skipping that looked like 15 FPS. On KDE Wayland, i'd get ok FPS, but other parts of the system didn't work. On Gnome Wayland, games ran buttery smooth, but not on Gnome X11.

When i switched to Nvidia, Gnome no longer worked properly, neither did KDE, and i switched to Xfce4 (x11) because both mutter and kwin compositors had issues displaying games.

 

Bottles works fabulously.  I was getting over 100 fps in most places using their soda runner.

GPU is a regular old boring RTX 2060.  I'm using the latest proprietary drivers.  I found out the open source ones suck when I installed Baldur's Gate 3.

Distro is Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.  No clue what DE it uses, nor do I know where to find out.  Let me try looking....  Okay it's a fork of gnome.  I also don't know what protocol and I don't know how to find that out either.

All my other games run flawlessly.  In fact, I get better performance out of them on Linux than I do on Windows, and I'm not just running Steam games.  I also have a couple games loading through Lutris  and FFXIV, which launches through a third party launcher using it's own variant of wine.

I have Skyrim, FFXIV, World of Warcraft, Gunfire Reborn and Baldur's Gate 3 installed.  They all run perfectly.  This is the only game giving me fits outside bottles. This is also the only game I'm using bottles to run.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Sakiri.4809

[Sina.9208]

10 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

 

You're right @Sina.9208, this is way better than just running the Steam client and hogging all the resources! 😉

If he cannot set it up properly of course, but I don't even know what he is doing wrong. All I know is that running GW2 in Bottles is very simple, it works out of the  box with a few clicks. (add the gw2 folder in Flatseal > make a gaming bottle > run GW2.exe from bottle)

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Sina.9208]

3 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

Bottles works fabulously.  I was getting over 100 fps in most places using their soda runner.

GPU is a regular old boring RTX 2060.  I'm using the latest proprietary drivers.  I found out the open source ones suck when I installed Baldur's Gate 3.

Distro is Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.  No clue what DE it uses, nor do I know where to find out.  Let me try looking....  Okay it's a fork of gnome.  I also don't know what protocol and I don't know how to find that out either.

All my other games run flawlessly.  In fact, I get better performance out of them on Linux than I do on Windows, and I'm not just running Steam games.  I also have a couple games loading through Lutris  and FFXIV, which launches through a third party launcher using it's own variant of wine.

I have Skyrim, FFXIV, World of Warcraft, Gunfire Reborn and Baldur's Gate 3 installed.  They all run perfectly.  This is the only game giving me fits outside bottles. This is also the only game I'm using bottles to run.

Did you update your system before it stopped working, what updates did you get? Did you run 'flatpak update' since stuff broke?

>Distro is Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.

You are on X11 then.

 

 

[Sina.9208]

22 hours ago, garpu.6210 said:

As for the overhead of Steam, it's far less than two tabs on firefox or discord. With a computer with at least 16GB of RAM, you shouldn't notice the native Steam client.

(Steam uses 200-300mb of vram, which can make a difference with a 3gb card with GW2.)

For me the big one is that it takes longer to launch games with Steam, with GW2 on my system the time to get to the launcher is much faster with Bottles and the new embedded Chromium browser (TP, Gem store etc) is much more performant.

+ Steam itself is not very fast to start up, it has to wait for login auth there before you can play, if you are too eager & click your shortcut too early, sometimes -rarely- it glitches out. (then you have to kill Steam & wait for the whole process again) 

disclaimer: I've been using Steam to launch GW2 for 2-3 months, then I used the Heroic Games Launcher for a while & now finally started using Bottles just a couple of weeks ago.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

6 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

Bottles works fabulously.  I was getting over 100 fps in most places using their soda runner.

Which proton did you use on Steam? What version?

I mean, if you got it to work, just use Bottles then. I just find it weird that it wouldn't work in any other configuration, Steam or Lutris... Lutris, yes, maybe, it's gotten worse lately, but Steam just works. I wonder what the problem is.

6 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

GPU is a regular old boring RTX 2060.  I'm using the latest proprietary drivers.  I found out the open source ones suck when I installed Baldur's Gate 3.

Ok, drivers are ruled out.

6 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

Distro is Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.  No clue what DE it uses, nor do I know where to find out.  Let me try looking....  Okay it's a fork of gnome.  I also don't know what protocol and I don't know how to find that out either.

The DE is Cinammon. That should be fine. As for X11 vs Wayland, i don't think Cinammon supports Wayland yet, so that's an X11 system. You can usually check if you log out, then under session select, should be noted, but not always.

6 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

All my other games run flawlessly.  In fact, I get better performance out of them on Linux than I do on Windows, and I'm not just running Steam games.  I also have a couple games loading through Lutris  and FFXIV, which launches through a third party launcher using it's own variant of wine.

Depending on what Proton version you ran GW2 on, that version could be the issue. Which one did you use? I'm curious.

6 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

have Skyrim, FFXIV, World of Warcraft, Gunfire Reborn and Baldur's Gate 3 installed.  They all run perfectly.  This is the only game giving me fits outside bottles. This is also the only game I'm using bottles to run.

If you managed to make it run in Bottles, then great! Keep using that.

3 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

If he cannot set it up properly of course, but I don't even know what he is doing wrong. All I know is that running GW2 in Bottles is very simple, it works out of the  box with a few clicks. (add the gw2 folder in Flatseal > make a gaming bottle > run GW2.exe from bottle)

Yeah, i'm not sure what went wrong either. Maybe some proton version is behaving badly with GW2?

Edited October 7, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[Sakiri.4809]

as for which proton version I used, I'd have to look because I did not change it from whatever it was defaulted to.  Let me go look rq.

Sorry, I was sleeping(EU).

Says Proton Experimental. Which is weird, because I was absolutely certain I had Glorious Eggroll installed.

[Sakiri.4809]

3 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

Did you update your system before it stopped working, what updates did you get? Did you run 'flatpak update' since stuff broke?

>Distro is Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.

You are on X11 then.

 

 

I lost internet in the middle of a gaming session and then it broke.

I had tried updating flatpak, it didn't work.  Said I have the latest version.

[Veprovina.4876]

2 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

Says Proton Experimental. Which is weird, because I was absolutely certain I had Glorious Eggroll installed.

I was gonna suggest to run GE proton, Experimental is, well, experimental.

Maybe if you'd run it with GE, it would have worked.

In any case, if it works in Bottles, just use that then.

[Sakiri.4809]

I would have likely run it with GE if the darn thing was installed.  Which it isn't, for some reason.

Explains why baldur's gate isn't launching today.

[Sina.9208]

5 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

Explains why baldur's gate isn't launching today.

These things should be pretty stable in the sense, that the same runner within the same envo should behave the same way every day. Either something really weird is going on in your system, or you have wine processes getting stuck and interfering with each other, which you can fix with rebooting your computer, or maybe with using 'kill' or 'killall' commands to clean up everything manually.

One other thing that sometimes happens is the shader cache getting corrupted. In that case deleting it can solve the issue, but I don't know where the driver's cache is on Nvidia, or if Baldur's Gate 3 stores those files separately and where that could be within the prefix, but this is an avenue worth exploring imo, if rebooting does not fix it. (I've completed Baldur's Gate 3 with the Heroic Games Launcher running Proton GE-15 as the runner, never had a problem. )

(If you use Steam to run games owned on Steam, then Steamplay takes care a lot of the backend kitten like this for you, so any normie should be able to run any popular game there without worry)

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

9 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

I would have likely run it with GE if the darn thing was installed.  Which it isn't, for some reason.

Explains why baldur's gate isn't launching today.

You can install ProtonupQT and manage GE versions that way. Just apply one to the Steam game from a list, then next time you run Steam it'll be there as an option for every game.

As for "not launching today", that's not how it's supposed to go like @Sina.9208 told you. If it runs, it runs, if ti doesn't, it doesn't, there shouldn't be any in-betweeny stuff like this. There's definitely something else going on with that system.

Try running memtest overnight on that computer, to see if you get any RAM errors. RAM errors can manifest in the most bizzare ways, and ever since i "experienced" a faulty RAM and what it can do to your system, i'm always cautious of this.

Just to illustrate my point - firefox tabs would crash, but not always. That's how it started. Pretty tame, but a lot of other weird stuff started happening as well.

[Sakiri.4809]

hm.  I'll try running memtest.

I don't reboot very often, I don't like it and I'm lazy.

My GE installs disappeared(I had 8-16 and 8-17 I think?)  and baldur's gate won't launch.  I hadn't tried in a while, but I'll try the memtest.  Where to get it? I forget, it's been years since I've used it.

 

[Sakiri.4809]

This saga gets odder.

I closed the game to open another for an in game event I had.

The game was no longer installed when I went to play it again after.  I'm redownloading it again, and it couldn't find the gw2.exe. -_-

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

This saga gets odder.

I closed the game to open another for an in game event I had.

The game was no longer installed when I went to play it again after.  I'm redownloading it again, and it couldn't find the gw2.exe. -_-

Run memtest. Some distros have it in GRUB as an option, otherwise, you can download it as a bootable ISO and put on an USB. Google memtest.

This reeks of faulty RAM, especially because files are getting corrupted/deleted, the same thing was happening to me. SDDM and KDE was randomly denied permissions to some files as well. I haven't lost any files, but newly downloaded and copied files would get corrupted randomly.

Check the health of your SSD if you have one, or nvme, whichever.

Remember, let memtest run for at least 4 hours, if not more, depending on how much RAM you have. Memtest also isn't 1000% reliable, mine said all checks passed, but the weird behaviour stopped when i replaced the RAM stick with another.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[Sakiri.4809]

I gotta find a USB stick to do that, I don't have any spares outside the one I used to do my install, and my windows boot one.

Hm. My SSDs check out, I just checked those recently(one's practically brand new at that).

[Sina.9208]

8 hours ago, Sakiri.4809 said:

I gotta find a USB stick to do that, I don't have any spares outside the one I used to do my install, and my windows boot one.

Hm. My SSDs check out, I just checked those recently(one's practically brand new at that).

Look up Ventoy! It solves this specific issue of needing multiple boot sticks.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Sakiri.4809]

I'll see what I can do. 😄

It's almost time for a new computer anyway.  This one is five years old.  I typically get a new one every five or six.

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

Greetings everyone.

It's been a long time coming but I've finally came back to the project with a new (and functional release). No tricks all treats release 😋

 

Changelog:

- Rebased package on Wine 8.18-Staging

- Package now supports Intel/AMD/Nvidia (no more separate packages)

- Updated DXVK to 2.3

- Added VKD3D-Proton 2.10 (in case of future DX12 support)

- Removed ArcDPS references to DX9 since it’s no longer supported. The uninstall script will now also remove ArcDPS config folder.

 

In case you're wondering why it took so long for such a new release, the reasons are too many, one of them being the required 'child window patch' which isn't part of upstream Wine. Some of the other reasons are personal life and taking up other projects.

For the new Linux people - This package (downloadable on 1st page) aims to let you play GW2 as effortlessly as possible without needing additional software such as Lutris, Steam, Proton...etc. It's very portable, meaning it will not clutter your home folder, instead it keeps everything in it's own folder. There are also handy scripts to install/update/remove arcdps.

 

Let me know if something doesn't work. A lot has changed in the Linux gaming world since the last release, so I may have to adjust to a few things still to accomodate 🙂

 

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by ArmoredVehicle.2849

[Nortes.5692]

On 10/23/2023 at 11:42 PM, ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

Greetings everyone.

It's been a long time coming but I've finally came back to the project with a new (and functional release). No tricks all treats release 😋

 

Changelog:

- Rebased package on Wine 8.18-Staging

- Package now supports Intel/AMD/Nvidia (no more separate packages)

- Updated DXVK to 2.3

- Added VKD3D-Proton 2.10 (in case of future DX12 support)

- Removed ArcDPS references to DX9 since it’s no longer supported. The uninstall script will now also remove ArcDPS config folder.

 

In case you're wondering why it took so long for such a new release, the reasons are too many, one of them being the required 'child window patch' which isn't part of upstream Wine. Some of the other reasons are personal life and taking up other projects.

For the new Linux people - This package (downloadable on 1st page) aims to let you play GW2 as effortlessly as possible without needing additional software such as Lutris, Steam, Proton...etc. It's very portable, meaning it will not clutter your home folder, instead it keeps everything in it's own folder. There are also handy scripts to install/update/remove arcdps.

 

Let me know if something doesn't work. A lot has changed in the Linux gaming world since the last release, so I may have to adjust to a few things still to accomodate 🙂

 

 

Hi!

After the first launch play.sh, the client window appears, downloads some files and then freezes.

Restarting it just gives the client window with the word "initializing" and freezes again..

Launch debug,sh shows this at the end:

02e8:err:esync:__esync_wait_objects Polling on fd 156 returned 0x20.
02e8:err:esync:__esync_wait_objects Polling on fd 162 returned 0x20.
X Error of failed request:  BadRegion (invalid Region parameter)
  Major opcode of failed request:  138 (XFIXES)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  10 (XFixesDestroyRegion)
  Serial number of failed request:  342
  Current serial number in output stream:  350
01dc:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetProcessTerminationMethod FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFA, 00007FFFFE1FFD40

 

Btw,  im using Lutris and everything works there

Edited October 26, 2023 by Nortes.5692

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

3 hours ago, Nortes.5692 said:

Hi!

After the first launch play.sh, the client window appears, downloads some files and then freezes.

Restarting it just gives the client window with the word "initializing" and freezes again..

Launch debug,sh shows this at the end:

02e8:err:esync:__esync_wait_objects Polling on fd 156 returned 0x20.
02e8:err:esync:__esync_wait_objects Polling on fd 162 returned 0x20.
X Error of failed request:  BadRegion (invalid Region parameter)
  Major opcode of failed request:  138 (XFIXES)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  10 (XFixesDestroyRegion)
  Serial number of failed request:  342
  Current serial number in output stream:  350
01dc:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetProcessTerminationMethod FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFA, 00007FFFFE1FFD40

 

Btw,  im using Lutris and everything works there

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

That issue unfortunately has been haunting me for a while now. It happened in the past too. If you still have it installed, could you try setting a virtual desktop (you can do this from the wine_settings.sh script) and see if that works around it?

 

[Nortes.5692]

1 hour ago, ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

That issue unfortunately has been haunting me for a while now. It happened in the past too. If you still have it installed, could you try setting a virtual desktop (you can do this from the wine_settings.sh script) and see if that works around it?

 

In this case, i see this

https://i.imgur.com/ZINoEhp.png

At the same time, while the window with the error is open, in the background, client still download the game files, but as soon as I close the  error window, everything disappears

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

21 hours ago, Nortes.5692 said:

In this case, i see this

https://i.imgur.com/ZINoEhp.png

At the same time, while the window with the error is open, in the background, client still download the game files, but as soon as I close the  error window, everything disappears

 

Which distro are you using? I could try to replicate it.

On my end I'm seeing the launcher freezing but if I just switch to a different tty and back to main desktop it would "unfreeze". Freezing issue only occurs if there's lots of files downloading, afterwards seems to work fine.

[Nortes.5692]

1 hour ago, ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

 

Which distro are you using? I could try to replicate it.

On my end I'm seeing the launcher freezing but if I just switch to a different tty and back to main desktop it would "unfreeze". Freezing issue only occurs if there's lots of files downloading, afterwards seems to work fine.

Linuxmint 21.2 victoria