besides wine, what do you need to run non-steam games? - eviltoast

From my understanding, at least one other necessary component is dxvk, and that wine is not enough.

If I dont use lutris or some other manager, how can I game on linux? do I have to configure dxvk? do I need soemthing else too? vulkan?

Is there a guide that explains it?

  • Astaroth@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Years ago, Winetricks would write a new verb definition for every new DXVK release. Presumably when it was much less stable. You can see remnants of that with the 100+ verbs for installing particular DXVK versions. Now it just takes the latest stable release. Yay for the maintainers, because that’s a lot less work. As a side effect, Winetricks doesn’t have a way of updating it normally.

    Oh does it not add new entries for every new DXVK release anymore? In that case I guess my DXVK version is probably a year old by now even though it says DXVK (Latest) and that it’s from year 2023: https://i.imgur.com/lNaqTPG.png

     

    There is an easy way of updating DXVK anyway. Just run Winetricks with --force:

    WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/whatever winetricks --force dxvk

    Now, admittedly, I misspoke about Winetricks “not supporting updating DXVK”. I learned this option exists just now. So you can force-update it with --force, which bypasses winetricks_is_installed and installs the latest version of DXVK. Guide has been updated accordingly; thank you for making me look into this again!

    Oh I had no idea about this, and I normally just use winetrick’s GUI while using it so I would’ve had to look up how to update dxvk if not for you explaining it.

     

    Although as a side note I’ve got the winetricks-git AUR package, not winetricks so maybe there’s some fix for it somewhere already, I’ll have to look into it. So far I haven’t had an issue with DXVK being too old, but I mostly play older games

     

    When I was writing the Visual Novels on GNU/Linux guide, I did a lot of experimentation with Winetricks.

    Unrelated but I’ll check that guide out, I’ve had trouble playing VNs that are in Japanese, as without LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8" wine /path/to/game.exe they won’t even run but even with it the fonts don’t work and are shown as empty boxes.

    • Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space
      2·
      1 year ago

      Oh does it not add new entries for every new DXVK release anymore?

      Looks like the last time a verb for a new DXVK version was added was dxvk2010 or DXVK 2.1, in February this year. We’re up to DXVK 2.3 now. Because the Winetricks codebase is around 20,000 lines of shellscript and I’m not the best at reading shellscript…I don’t think the dxvk verb updates the Wineprefix’s DXVK version based on what the newest version is. I think that’s just an alternate way of installing DXVK; you can pull the latest stable release, or you can install a particular version.

      I think executing a particular verb for a DXVK version would override whatever DXVK dlls you currently have installed in that prefix, too. I have no idea how to check what DXVK version is installed a particular Wineprefix, though.

      even though it says DXVK (Latest) and that it’s from year 2023

      That’s based on the verb metadata; not what version of DXVK you currently have installed. A contributor bumped the year for the dxvk verb from 2017 to 2023 in a commit in February this year.

      Oh I had no idea about this, and I normally just use winetrick’s GUI while using it so I would’ve had to look up how to update dxvk if not for you explaining it.

      Happy if it helps. I’ve never used the GUI, but it’s awesome that they managed to create a functioning GUI frontend with shellscript. Insane, really. God I hate shellscript…

      So far I haven’t had an issue with DXVK being too old, but I mostly play older games

      You probably won’t get an issue with DXVK being “too old”, but newer versions of DXVK implement more features (particularly for D3D12) and include bug fixes to improve compatibility or performance. From the 2.3 release notes:

      Fixed a minor issue with D3D9 feedback loop tracking.

      Test Drive Unlimited 2: Fixed shadows on grass.

      Tomb Raider Anniversary: Improved performance.

      So you want to be running the latest version for better compatibility. That said, I mostly play visual novels. My biggest problems are still DRM and media playback, which DXVK has very little to do with.

      Unrelated but I’ll check that guide out, I’ve had trouble playing VNs that are in Japanese, as without LANG=“ja_JP.UTF-8” wine /path/to/game.exe they won’t even run but even with it the fonts don’t work and are shown as empty boxes.

      You’re the exact person this guide was written for! This sounds like an issue that’s easily fixed by installing fakejapanese with winetricks. More info here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#japanese_characters_aren_t_displaying_properly

      And if you have .txt files in the game directory (like documentation or whatever) with garbled text, that’s probably because they’re encoded in Shift JIS. There’s an easy fix to make them readable: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#text_files_with_garbled_text

      (That last one had me scratching my head for a very long time)