Wine 3.4 released with more Vulkan support

WINE has come -such- a long way from three years ago, when I was considering it basically useless for the type of Windows games I want to use it for (mostly more recent games using DX11, not twenty year old retro games). Now? It runs almost all of my legacy Windows games more or less flawlessly. Sims 3/4, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Guild Wars 2, Skyrim... all works. Not not only works, but works well! With a bit more work on the D3D bits, I guess it will soon run Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls Online nicely, too. Both of these games already run for me, but with fairly major issues.

Overall I am really impressed. A few months ago, I became a 100% Linux user when my Windows partition got corrupted and I decided that this was a signal from the Penguin gods to finally do away with it for good. WINE helps me to still run the few non-Linux games I still crave, and is a nice insurance in case some of the publishers currently supporting Linux decide not to anymore.

Quoting: KimyrielleWINE has come -such- a long way from three years ago, when I was considering it basically useless for the type of Windows games I want to use it for (mostly more recent games using DX11, not twenty year old retro games). Now? It runs almost all of my legacy Windows games more or less flawlessly. Sims 3/4, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Guild Wars 2, Skyrim... all works. Not not only works, but works well! With a bit more work on the D3D bits, I guess it will soon run Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls Online nicely, too. Both of these games already run for me, but with fairly major issues.

Overall I am really impressed. A few months ago, I became a 100% Linux user when my Windows partition got corrupted and I decided that this was a signal from the Penguin gods to finally do away with it for good. WINE helps me to still run the few non-Linux games I still crave, and is a nice insurance in case some of the publishers currently supporting Linux decide not to anymore.

Yes, this is exactly what I like to see and why I think Wine is such a valuable tool. For people who move to Linux or want to, being able to play games that are likely never to see a port can be an issue, a valid one too. You've paid for those games, you want to play them...but you want to use Linux.

I still maintain my position that any full Linux user would be wise not to continue purchasing *new* games to play in Wine, but for previous purchases it's fair game really.

In this wine version sonic all stars transformed shows big improvement compared last test

Wine 2.15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEGssNA1QA

And now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4llgZ6pIvk

Another titles works with this wine is

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas + Mods + Cleo

View video on youtube.com

Street Fighter X Tekken

View video on youtube.com

Blodrayne 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-YD97pUVpg

Blodrayne 2

View video on youtube.com

^_^


Last edited by mrdeathjr on 17 March 2018 at 11:24 pm UTC

Wine is a great tool and DXVK improvement is amazing. But it is also a little bit worrying since lately ( due to improvements ) it became an excuse to spend Windows only games ( because some titles even work on day 1 ) and puts a Linux native port into a meaningless position.

Because lately i'm seeing so much people screaming on various games Steam forums as " Do Linux version " but already most of them have it.

So when developer decided to do it ( with official support , which is the key part as a platform value ) , dev expecting sales from that platform.

But seeing so many people have it , dev would simply say : You already bought it , sale is done. Why should i bother with it and put effort for supporting it?

Or dev can port it anyway but possibly face with low sale count from Linux.

Why native ports are important? Linux need more gamers and best way to convince a newcomer is the native game count , not Wine. Because Wine is not a tool ( despite Lutris like solutions , you can't guarentee that scripts will work for everyone ) that a newcomer can quickly adapt.

That worries me and also feels like a shitty move to devs whom put efforts into Linux versions.

Quoting: LeopardThat worries me and also feels like a shitty move to devs whom put efforts into Linux versions.

This seems like a weird statement to me. Are you suggesting the WINE devs stop making progress? As you said, native games are obviously the easiest way to game, and it's probably the way the majority of the Linux crowd games most of the time. Of course there are folks like Mr Death Jr. above who dedicate a lot of time into it, Linux attracts hobbyists (And good on 'em ^_^). However, I can't see that impacting porting decisions. Most Linux users probably don't use WINE on a daily basis. Most game devs probably won't even be familiar with it.

On the other hand there are people working hard on WINE so we can play games and use software that may never be on our platform natively, and that's pretty rad, yeah?


Last edited by HadBabits on 17 March 2018 at 9:56 pm UTC

With Wine-Devel many things don't seem to work. When starting Doom 2016 it complains about a missing Vulkan library. GTA V can't even get to the black screen. Generally I get a lot of error messages.

So I'm still using the latest staging version. At least that's how things work on my system (Nvidia GTX 970 / Xubuntu).

For the Devel-branch I had installed:
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-devel

But now I'm back to staging. However, this is stuck in version 2.21. Has anyone under Ubuntu ever played with the Devel-branch Doom 2016 or made GTA V work?


Last edited by 1xok on 17 March 2018 at 10:18 pm UTC

Quoting: HadBabitsHowever, I can't see that impacting porting decisions. Most Linux users probably don't use WINE on a daily basis. Most game devs probably won't even be familiar with it.

I think you are wrong here. I guess you are correct that wine is not used on a lot of Linux boxes, but I'm sure that most people that play games on Linux are familiar with wine. Every dev with common sense will first investigate how people play on a certain platform before investing resources into it.

I do use dosbox occasionally to fire up a retro game, I'm all in that wine should provide a way for people to move some of their loved games over to Linux or to play games that will never see the light in Linux land. Unfortunately wine is progressing a little bit to well, especially with initiatives like dxvk. I guess Feral will stop porting games to Linux once their (upcoming) games are somewhat playable on wine with the windows version before Feral's release dates:(. No matter if they offer support and a better performance, most people will then buy the windows version earlier.. Feral stopping supporting Linux is in my opinion the end of AAA games on Linux.

While wine (and dxvk) are technically astonishing I do share the anxiousness that we, the Linux community, are shooting ourselves in the foot when trying to compete with the few companies that are earning money with games on Linux..


Last edited by jens on 17 March 2018 at 10:33 pm UTC

Quoting: jensI think you are wrong here. I guess you are correct that wine is not used on a lot of Linux boxes, but I'm sure that most people that play games on Linux are familiar with wine. Every dev with common sense will first investigate how people play on a certain platform before investing resources into it.

I'll concede on this point, as we are doing a lot of speculation here.

Quoting: jensUnfortunately wine is progressing a little bit to well, especially with initiatives like dxvk. I guess Feral will stop porting games to Linux once their (upcoming) games are somewhat playable on wine with the windows version before Feral's release dates.

I still think this is a bizarre concept though. I mean, if WINE really did become 1:1 performance-wise that'd be fantastic. It would be yet another way a dev could deliver their game to our platform; I think the only reason we don't have 'wine-ports' now is that devs want to guarantee a degree of parity of performance, and we're not there yet.

Sure, maybe it would make a company like Feral obsolete, but markets evolve over time. Who knows, it might even make their job easier, if all they had to do was maintain quality wine-wrappers for devs. I know I certainly hate fiddling with WINE and would have no problem buying an official "Linux port" even if it's not native.

Quoting: HadBabits

Quoting: LeopardThat worries me and also feels like a shitty move to devs whom put efforts into Linux versions.

This seems like a weird statement to me. Are you suggesting the WINE devs stop making progress? As you said, native games are obviously the easiest way to game, and it's probably the way the majority of the Linux crowd games most of the time. Of course there are folks like Mr Death Jr. above who dedicate a lot of time into it, Linux attracts hobbyists (And good on 'em ^_^). However, I can't see that impacting porting decisions. Most Linux users probably don't use WINE on a daily basis. Most game devs probably won't even be familiar with it.

On the other hand there are people working hard on WINE so we can play games and use software that may never be on our platform natively, and that's pretty rad, yeah?

Sure , let me explain and ask.

I'm not saying Wine devs to stop , i'm saying Linux users to stop buying Windows only games.

I will be more open : Pirate Windows only games if you are in a so bad needy position to play them.

Because :

1-) You will feed Windows market ( already massive ) and in a some way grace devs or companies with don't giving a shit about Linux.

2-) When you bought a Windows only game ; you won't purchase it again when it is ported to Linux. So Wine development kinda forcing porters ( VP , Feral ) to pick not run well with Wine titles.

Is depending Wine for gaming more and more , can be considered as Gaming on Linux? I don't think so , that is kinda similar to saying " Hey , i'm running Windows with gpu passthrough on my Linux box for gaming , so i'm gaming on Linux".

Yeah mate , yeah you are.

Quoting: 1xokWith Wine-Devel many things don't seem to work. When starting Doom 2016 it complains about a missing Vulkan library. GTA V can't even get to the black screen. Generally I get a lot of error messages.

So I'm still using the latest staging version. At least that's how things work on my system (Nvidia GTX 970 / Xubuntu).

For the Devel-branch I had installed:
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-devel

But now I'm back to staging. However, this is stuck in version 2.21. Has anyone under Ubuntu ever played with the Devel-branch Doom 2016 or made GTA V work?

Doom works fine in Vulkan mode on Wine 3.4. The way Vulkan I implemented Vulkan is different from wine-staging. The functionality is within what Vulkan calls an 'ICD', which is winevulkan.dll. You need to install the Windows vulkan loader vulkan-1.dll to use winevulkan. See full instructions on my github: https://github.com/roderickc/wine-vulkan. We are working on making this all easier in newer versions.