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Saints Row 2 [Steam Link] is currently free to grab it on Steam for a limit time, so act quick if you don't own it yet. The other Saints Row titles are on sale as well.

While I wasn't very impressed with the port personally, some of you who don't own it might want to check it out. If you add it to your accounts now, it should be free to own forever. Always nice when developers offer this for some of their older games, but it's just clever marketing for their newer games.

You can find them all here and on Steam they all support Linux, sadly GOG isn't stocking the Linux versions.

If you are trying it for the first time, come back and tell us how it runs for you! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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dubigrasu Apr 28, 2017
OK, about the VP's port versus running the game with Wine.
Since both options are not that great and is hard to figure out which one is worse (just by playing) I've done some testing using libframetime using the same save/same settings/etc
For both tests I basically ran on sidewalks for 4 minutes on the very same (rather busy) route, not much of a test but better than nothing.
VP's port in blue and Wine in green:

![](https://i.postimg.cc/J1kyNYsG/frametimes.png)

As you can see, VP's port has somewhat better frametimes, but when textures are loaded there's a huge spike visibly slowing down the gameplay (though like I said, you can substantially improve this by using a fast disk or running it from RAM).
With Wine the spikes are not that visible while playing, since frametimes (although less fuzzier) are already much worse.
I would be curious to see some Gallium results here though, I imagine/hope for a much better result in this case (I might try this too if I find the time).

Also some numbers:

Wine:
Min/avg/max frametimes (ms): 40.982 / 52.0097 / 137.58
Min/avg/max FPS: 7.2685 / 19.2272 / 24.401
50/90/95/99 percentiles (ms): 52.206 / 58.942 / 60.78 / 64.29

VP:
Min/avg/max frametimes (ms): 15.72 / 22.8035 / 114.261
Min/avg/max FPS: 8.75189 / 43.8529 / 63.6132
50/90/95/99 percentiles (ms): 22.06 / 26.765 / 28.582 / 30.739


Last edited by dubigrasu on 26 October 2018 at 4:06 pm UTC
adamhm Apr 28, 2017
<snip>

Interesting. Some suggestions to try with Wine:

- If you're running the GOG version they applied a hack to lock the framerate, this seems to have an impact on responsiveness & performance and the game seems to run better with it disabled, although a bit more glitchy (I've updated my wrapper script to include the option to disable/re-enable the hack as desired).

- If you're using an Nvidia card try setting UseGLSL to disabled (if you're using an AMD GPU it'll likely just cause the game to crash instantly).


Last edited by adamhm on 28 April 2017 at 8:45 pm UTC
dubigrasu Apr 28, 2017
@adamhm
Great, thanks, I'll try both.
dubigrasu Apr 28, 2017
<snip>
Interesting. Some suggestions to try with Wine:

- If you're running the GOG version they applied a hack to lock the framerate, this seems to have an impact on responsiveness & performance and the game seems to run better with it disabled, although a bit more glitchy (I've updated my wrapper script to include the option to disable/re-enable the hack as desired).

- If you're using an Nvidia card try setting UseGLSL to disabled (if you're using an AMD GPU it'll likely just cause the game to crash instantly).
Definitely an improvement, disabling GLSL hadn't much effect, but removing the cap did worked.

Wine = Green
Wine + no cap = Magenta
VP's port = Blue
![](https://i.postimg.cc/sj1Xt1Pg/Frametimes.png)

Wine:
Min/avg/max frametimes (ms): 40.982 / 52.0097 / 137.58
Min/avg/max FPS: 7.2685 / 19.2272 / 24.401
50/90/95/99 percentiles (ms): 52.206 / 58.942 / 60.78 / 64.29

Wine = no cap:
Min/avg/max frametimes (ms): 19.713 / 27.6286 / 140.464
Min/avg/max FPS: 7.11926 / 36.1943 / 50.7279
50/90/95/99 percentiles (ms): 26.725 / 33.514 / 34.55 / 36.243

VP's port:
Min/avg/max frametimes (ms): 15.72 / 22.8035 / 114.261
Min/avg/max FPS: 8.75189 / 43.8529 / 63.6132
50/90/95/99 percentiles (ms): 22.06 / 26.765 / 28.582 / 30.739


Last edited by dubigrasu on 26 October 2018 at 4:08 pm UTC
adamhm Apr 29, 2017
Definitely an improvement, disabling GLSL hadn't much effect, but removing the cap did worked.

Disabling GLSL felt like it helped a bit here, although it was subtle enough that I kept having to go back & forth to compare so I could've been imagining it :p Quite a big difference between GOG's hack being enabled/disabled though.

In other news, I've released a big update for my Wine wrapper. I added support for the Gentlemen of the Row mod and converted GotR's .bat file installer into a Bash script for easier integration, with GUI menus using Zenity :) When used with my wrapper it can automatically install the mod too so it's immediately ready to play, no need to move files about when it's done.

The GotR script is available separately for use with the Steam version & works much like the original when used that way.
dubigrasu May 4, 2017
@adamhm
You might wanna try Wine Staging 2.7 for the missing Ambient Occlusion, seems to be working now.
adamhm May 6, 2017
No difference with Wine Staging 2.7 here
dubigrasu May 6, 2017
No difference with Wine Staging 2.7 here
Hm, definitely working here. Only that I didn't used the script this time, just a fresh prefix with xact/xaudio/directx9 installed,
adamhm May 6, 2017
Seems it needs native d3dx9_39. Looks like this library works for 2.0 as well, but it feels like it runs slightly better in Wine Staging 2.7 (running the game with showfps seems to suggest it gains a few fps or so)

[edit] And the wrapper is now updated


Last edited by adamhm on 6 May 2017 at 2:30 pm UTC
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