Linux Steam with Proton

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Linux Steam with Proton

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:33 am

Hey all,

I have been trying to get XWA to work with XWAU on linux for ages. Oddly enough It would never execute with wine on linux, even wine staging... It would just crash with some cryptic error. Which is really weird considering I never had an issue with wine on OSX (before my macbook bit the big one). Anyway, I discovered it actually would run perfectly with Proton through steam..... Go figure.

Now I finally got XWAU to work. Here is how.

First I should note to install any craft pack I have to open a terminal and run:

Code: Select all

export WINEPREFIX='~/.steam/steamapps/compatdata/361670/pfx'
(the prefix for steam's xwa install)

then install the xwau craft pack with my internal wine installation

Code: Select all

wine ./XWAUCPv1.5.exe
once done iI need to run winecfg and add ddraw.dll to run as native or it will try to use wine's version to bad effect. (Not a bad idea to update to the latest one either)

I can then run xwahacker to change my selected resolution and FPS to whatever I want.

---------------------------------------------------------------

It will run perfectly but there are some quirks:

If I change the resolution at all, after selecting the base resolution in the xwau installer, it will completely break DTM's backgrounds in exactly the same manner as Big Cat on page 16 of the "Common Graphics Problems in XWA" thread:
BigCat wrote:
Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:39 pm
Screenshots, with backdrop on and off:

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/6c1f5029-c ... fa5967.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/02a223f4-7 ... 3467c2.jpg

With backdrop on there is much more of them.

My graphic board:

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/058929d9-7 ... 49d57a.jpg

Up to date driver (21.21.13.7570 by NVIDIA)
I should note I too have an NVIDIA card. And this happens even with the latest ddraw.dll. And If were to try to go back to the old resolution, DTM's backgrounds are still broken and I have to uninstall everything and start from scratch. Strange the same issue would happen on wine as on actual windows.

Even more highly annoying, if I install any additional craft on top of the craft pack, that too will break DTM's backgrounds in the same manner. I have no idea why. But if this is what I'm stuck with, I'll just have to wait till version 1.6 till I can get the new craft.... :( I have no idea why this is.

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:15 pm

No one has tried to get this running in linux yet? I have tried updating all the hooks as well. No such luck Something in the ship installers is breaking the backdrops.

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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:34 pm

Not I. But, have you tried updating just the hooks in a setup that is otherwise working? Note: you can make a full copy of your working setup, so that you don't have to uninstall/reinstall every time something gets mangled.

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Sun Mar 03, 2019 2:26 pm

Thanks for the thought, I'm afraid I had tried that yesterday. No luck. I had noticed that the individual craft patches install hooks that were not needed for the XWAUCP. I'll try investigating it more tonight or tomorrow.

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Post by darklord » Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:21 pm

It appears as if it's not the hooks that are breaking the backgrounds. The individual installers modify XwingAlliance.exe, of course, but they do so in a manner that breaks the backdrops. My gut tells me it would work if I were allowed to reinstall the backdrops at the end, but with the XWAUCP installed, the backdrop installer doesn't work. And if I were to install the XWAUCP at the end, that would override the individual installers. So there doesn't seem to be a solution for this except to wait for the next release of XWAUCP....

I guess next step, for science, would be to carefully find out which installers are doing it.

Slave One - Works fine
Pinook Fighter - Breaks Backdrops
Gunboat - Breaks Backdrops
Nebulon B Frig - Breaks Backdrops (only tried default)
Cargo Facility 2 - Breaks Backdrops
{EDIT}
(At this point there doesn't appear to be enough working to warrant going further...)

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Post by Driftwood » Tue Mar 05, 2019 3:36 am

Weird. Maybe just wait for a while...

PM the info regarding what you suspect with the installers breaking the backdrops with any specifics to Jeremya and DS perhaps. Maybe something got oopsied.

Offhand though I haven't had a problem.

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:59 am

Well I'm sure they saw this thread already XD. And I don't think it's an issue, persay, with any installer or others would have mentioned it by now. Just something weird with wine/proton. I should just be grateful it works at all. It wasn't executing at all before proton on linux. Despite my past experiences with wine on OSX and all the information on the internet saying it should work just fine. Maybe something with the NVIDIA proprietary graphics drivers, IDK. But everything is you solve one problem, here are 10 more...

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:28 pm

Hello,
Have you checked with XwaExePatcher that the right backdrop scaling factor is applied? It should be 128.0f for DTM's backdrops.

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Wed Mar 06, 2019 5:50 pm

Hi. I havent. I will definetly give that a try

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darklord
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Post by darklord » Sat Mar 09, 2019 10:12 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:
Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:28 pm
Hello,
Have you checked with XwaExePatcher that the right backdrop scaling factor is applied? It should be 128.0f for DTM's backdrops.
Hi, Thank-you so much! That did it! I had to barrow a windows laptop as I didn't feel like any more adventures with dotnet4.0 and wine. (It can work, but man is it a pain). I threw the executable on a USB stick and started it up on the laptop. Once up I then hit restore on the 128.0f setting and re-applied. After that it worked perfectly. Those individual craft installers must do something funny under wine i'm betting.

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Post by Darksaber » Sat Mar 09, 2019 10:28 pm

Nope non of the individual craft installers contain anything to do with the Backdrop scaling factors!
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”
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darklord
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Post by darklord » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:44 am

I'm sure not intentionally, that would be silly. They do modify the xwingalliance.exe. From what I'm seeing in doing so with wine, it looks to do so in such a manner that breaks the background scaling. Something is not preserved right and evidently the scaling needs to be reapplied afterward. Maybe it's some kind of overflow. IDK I mean, none of this was designed for wine, should I be surprised if unexpected results happen?

All I know is everything was perfect after the 1.5 XWAUCP and then I installed an individual installer and it stops working. I've tried isolating to see which one did it and it looks to be most of them. I'm not crazy man, this is just what I see.

{EDIT}
I tried replicating everything. Turns out it wasn't the reapply of the 128.0f that fixed the backgrounds. In fact, that did nothing. it was "removing the texture size limit" that fixed the backgrounds. I just happened to stumble on that the first time around. But this has the drawback of causing the game to crash when I shoot an assault transport (Not surprising considering it wasn't a recommended setting), but maybe it's a clue on what's really going on here.

{edit2}
Borrowed my wife's laptop for a bit and did the whole steam installation on that. I verified it works correctly and then copied it to the steam linux installation. It was then broken in all the same places. So that rules out any issues with the installers under wine, and is just wine graphical quirks with the DX11 render.

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