Saints Row 2 & 3 Are Being Ported By Virtual Programming

Now, are you ready to discuss this like an adult? Or are you going to throw another hissy fit?

And which part was my hissy fit, the "LOL" or my patented sarcasm tags?

I see you've realized that you can "like" your own comments. That's cute.

Since you apparently have nothing more to say, I'll assume you concede the point and will wish a good day.

I also have The Witcher 2 but it is one of their early ports... can you guys please tell me if the port was updated and if it is working fine now?

I played it start to finish a few weeks ago and performance was fantastic. Nvidia 970 card. I think setting __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 made a big positive difference.

Note that this game is more demanding than Bioshock Infinite so if Bioshock doesn't play well on your computer, The Witcher 2 will probably be worse.

I'm happy to see more and more people are recognizing VP are actually the good guys. Native ports have been getting worse in performance and more limited in hardware support. They hardly do anything good for the cause of Linux gaming.
And sorry to burst your bubble, people, but Shadow of Mordor is NOT a good port. It's mediocre one, at least in terms of performance. People with much older hardware can play the game on Windows as compared to Linux.
I'm truly sad to see so many people are still obsessed with "native ports". Native ports have in general been quite unimpressive. Say what you want, but the only constant performance progression I've observed lately has been with the wrapper games.

I hope Saints Row IV and Gat (which is a standalone SRIV mod IIRC) get a native port. I really don't mind SR2 & 3 being VP, their last ports have been good and the games are unlikely to get ported otherwise. Unfortunately I already own them both. I haven't played 2 though, and I'm sure I can find a friend who doesn't own them ^^

I see you've realized that you can "like" your own comments. That's cute.

Since you apparently have nothing more to say, I'll assume you concede the point and will wish a good day.

That seems to be your speciality: assuming (that and making condescending remarks with no knowledge to back it up).

Regarding your "point", you've made none, so there's really nothing left to say. If you want to show me a Feral or Aspyr port that has performed equal to or better than the Windows version, then we can talk.

Can't wait to play these games :)

I actually wonder why Company of Heroes 2 is slow... running the benchmark it appears to hit all CPU cores evenly, at about 50%, the GPU isn't being completely bogged down although RAM usage is rather high (but not enough to hit swap).

Shadow of Mordor is a hog though, but the three settings that make the biggest difference are: Shadow Quality, Ambient Occlusion, and Texture Quality. If you have Texture Quality set to Ultra it's better to stick with Low or Medium Texture Filtering as you'll hit VRAM limits pretty quickly otherwise, but you can get away with it just barely sometimes. Really just stick with High for that unless you own a Titan or 980Ti... Anyway the thing is that the game EATS system RAM. Even on Windows it uses 6GB+ at pretty much all times. On my system most tasks are generally taking 1-2GB in the background, so that pretty much maxes things out since I've only got 8GB installed. So if the settings exceed the GPU's limit to the point where it has to hit System RAM instead you'll spend all of your time in and out of Swap since System is already full.. I'm guessing people that have 12 or 16GB of RAM have a much better time with SoM.

Anyway, I'm excited to finally be able to play Saints Row III. I bought it on a whim years ago but haven't actually played it since it never worked in Wine. It's been awhile since I've played a GTA-like game.


Last edited by Mblackwell on 10 Oct 2015 at 1:00 am UTC

I hope Saints Row IV and Gat (which is a standalone SRIV mod IIRC) get a native port. I really don't mind SR2 & 3 being VP, their last ports have been good and the games are unlikely to get ported otherwise. Unfortunately I already own them both. I haven't played 2 though, and I'm sure I can find a friend who doesn't own them ^^

Agree, the general rule should be ~3 years or older > wrap it. Any newer than that and the game is better served native.

"The reason they still get flak as people are rather bitter from the initial port performance of The Witcher 2"

I don't believe that's the reason at all, not anymore. They've long confirmed for all that their wrapper is running well indeed.
This very site had an excellent article a while ago that presented a long range of rational reasons why VRs closed-source wrapper is not the way forward for Linux gaming.

My personal problem with it is that it's not native code. Not because native code is guaranteed to run better (as we know in real-life examples now) but for the longer term advantages. But as the article I refer to also pointed out - if VR instead had joined the Wine crew in their efforts to optimize that solution, it would have gained Linux as a whole a great deal more.

I'm still gonna play'em games though. :)


Last edited by Beamboom on 10 Oct 2015 at 5:28 am UTC

"The reason they still get flak as people are rather bitter from the initial port performance of The Witcher 2"

I don't believe that's the reason at all, not anymore. They've long confirmed for all that their wrapper is running well indeed.
This very site had an excellent article a while ago that presented a long range of rational reasons why VRs closed-source wrapper is not the way forward for Linux gaming.

My personal problem with it is that it's not native code. Not because native code is guaranteed to run better (as we know in real-life examples now) but for the longer term advantages. But as the article I refer to also pointed out - if VR instead had joined the Wine crew in their efforts to optimize that solution, it would have gained Linux as a whole a great deal more.

I'm still gonna play'em games though. :)

It's not the way forward for titles from let's say at the very least made this year and onwards, but for older titles we may have never gotten anyway, why the heck not.

If by VR I guess you mean VP :P

If VP joined Wine, guess what would happen? They would go out of business obviously, their business is based around their tech and so be it. Not to mention Wine sales count for Windows, not Linux, so go figure.

I guess I've never really understood the hubbub surrounding wrapped vs. native ports. Native or wrapped, if the game is playable on my Linux box --- especially if it's a AAA title --- then I'm do-a-little-dance happy.

If VP joined Wine, guess what would happen? They would go out of business obviously, their business is based around their tech and so be it. Not to mention Wine sales count for Windows, not Linux, so go figure.

Not sure I can agree with you there. A lot of games getting ports (such as the recently announced Overlord 1 and 2) have long since ran perfectly under Wine, and yet contracts are still handed out to release native game ports for such titles. There are many reasons for this, such as short-term advantages in distancing the main developer/publisher from testing, packaging and support responsibilities.

If VP took Wine, add compatibility for Saints Row 1 & 2, and used that solution to package the wrapped game and support it, everyone would win. VP would still get their $$, would have had less work to get there, and end users would end up with a better version of Wine at the end which doesn't cut into VP's profits (but could help them save money in future).

The other problem you mentioned is Wine sales counting for Windows - but is that really happening? If so, is it really a problem? As of today, http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey says Windows is at 95.71, OS X is at 3.23, and GNU/Linux is at 0.94. That comes to 99.88% of operating systems accounted for, so what about the other 0.12%? Probably, that's your percentage of people running Wine.

Regardless, Valve knows the number of people who play under Wine. When you submit the Steam Hardware & Software Survey form, it shows you the data sent, and it clearly detects and sends information about Wine (if applicable) such as the version in use. I'm sure Valve could make that information available to developers if there were enough interest in doing so.

I'm not sure what Beamboom means exactly by "if VR[sic] instead had joined the Wine crew", but I do believe VP should have based their work on the Wine project and gave back to the community, both for the cost savings and for the betterment of Wine for all.

Looks like both entries (SR2 and SR3) are gone from the "In development" section?

Hopefully VP will allow the Gentlemen Of The Row mod for Saints Row 2 otherwise the game is virtually unplayable.