Valve's fantastic first-person puzzle game Portal 2 recently had a huge upgrade that pulled in DXVK giving it Vulkan support, with another update out now to further improve it.
As a reminder: this has nothing to do with Source 2. Portal 2 by default uses Direct3D 9 on Windows and OpenGL on Linux. For the Linux version, original Source engine games like this used a translation layer called ToGL to translate D3D9 to OpenGL. DXVK being added in gives the option to launch Portal 2 with "-vulkan" as a launch option which may improve overall performance.
Here's what's new in the latest update:
Improvements:
- Improved Vulkan implementation
- Overall performance improvements
- Massively improved performance with Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) on AMD
- Made the intro video skippable by any button on a Steam Controller
- Added controller glpyhs to the main menu when using a controller
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed the Super 8 teaser not playing on Linux
- Fixed certain Unicode characters being displayed as garbage on Linux
- Fixed text corruption in the challenge mode UI on Linux
- Fixed a crash that could occur wrt. networking on Linux
- Fixed the text color in advanced video settings not respecting the dark panel UI variant
- Fixed Model/Texture detail defaulting to Low in Vulkan mode
- Fixed the challenge mode timer being cut off
- Fixed a crash after trying to play a demo without having the respective map
- Fixed a crash when trying to load invalid VPKs
You can buy and play Portal 2 on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: DuncThe thing is, you can only play it for the first time once.
A fate it shares with Amnesia Rebirth or Life is Strange 2. I think both are better than the respective first parts, but I find it hard to judge as... yeah, it's not the first time again.
TheRiddick Mar 2, 2021
But the second is so much better. The environments are bigger, bolder. The characters, GladOS, Wheately and Cave (Cave Johnson, what a character! Absolutely epic voice acting from JK Simmons!), all gel (geddit?) so wonderfully. And that ending! But it's also just simply more fun. The gels in the game are so enjoyable to use, so satisfying.
So yeah, it wasn't the "first", but Portal 2 is certainly the better of the two, in my opinion. And I didn't even mention the incredible co-op...
First Portal especially when played first time around, ending overstayed its welcome. It might be that there's stark contrast between the first half with small puzzles and vibrant colors. Second half is grim and gray with less definite goals. I appreciated the latter half more when second time around as I knew that between the grim and gray there are few nice parts that make it worthwhile.
With Portal 2 the boring parts are smaller and more spaced out. Although even in those sections crazy architecture is intriguing.
I guess it's bit of Valves thing that it's obsessed with long sewer and factory sections, there has just been more and more restraint over the years.
Both games are worth playing though. Personally I guess Portal wins though. I have replayed it as playing it through it's not as big effort. Portal 2 falls in category where it was fun for the first time around, but second time around, time commitment feels bit daunting.
But both are pretty much one and done though. I really have no desire to play them after having already played them.
I actually played it on a steam link several years ago. The babies loved watching me play it.
Quoting: GuestI really must find the time one day to sort out what is going wrong with DXVK on my system. Still cannot get Portal2 -vulkan to actually work, or newer DXVK versions in a system wine prefix, and I'm convinced that they are related.
I have the odd feeling that Valve will strip out the OpenGL backend and leave me unable to play it at all.
I can't speak for the portal2-bundled DXVK, but I had an issue with my system wine prefix a while back to watch out for -- especially since it's such an easy thing to miss. If it's an old prefix, be mindful that in recent years Wine started defaulting to 64-bit prefixes but as I'd been using the same prefix for years it was still 32-bit and I was trying to run a 64-bit app.
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