Want to play Age of Empires 4 on Linux? Now you can. Another update for Proton Experimental has gone live. What is Steam Play and Proton? See our beginner's guide for more if you're unclear.
As of November 9, Proton Experimental got fixes to allow Age of Empires 4 to work as well as Marvel's Guardian of the Galaxy (although that only works on AMD GPUs currently). Additionally, a rare crash when starting up Baldur's Gate 3 was also solved for this release.
Checking on it myself this morning and yup — Age of Empires 4 works. Once it's set to Proton Experimental it's looking really good. Pictured below running on an NVIDIA GPU:
You may see an error about an AMD GPU drivers, even with an NVIDIA GPU, when trying to launch the game - it can safely be ignored.
Nice to see another huge recent game release working so nicely on Linux less than two weeks after going live. That's a pretty reasonable turnaround time, especially interesting with it being an Xbox Game Studios title, something that is always a little odd seeing load up on Linux. Both single-player and online multiplayer appear to work well.
Performance with all settings turned up to max on 1080p seems to be pretty darn great too, very smooth overall. A very minor graphical issue with objects just out of the fog of war, where you see a strange outline sometimes but other than that it seems to be just fine. Edit: turns out that graphical issue is on Windows too.
See the Proton Experimental changelog to see all the current differences.
Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here's a simple HOWTO (as it's not complicated!). Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:
For an explainer in text form:
- Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
- Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
- Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
- Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
- From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.
Edit: Uhm... quite expensive
... too much for me for Proton Experimental. Proton DB shows mixed reviews, but "gold" status. Some problems with stability... mhmmm... I think I'll wait a little bit longer.Last edited by nepo on 10 November 2021 at 12:59 pm UTC
fearnflavio Nov 10, 2021
Quoting: nepoGreat news, thanks alot!
Edit: Uhm... quite expensive
Yes, same.
I really want to play this one and Forza Horizon 5 but could not find anyone showing it running fine on Nvidia and the game is quite expensive.
Saw a video of a guy running it on a Radeon Rx but on ProtonDB it still borked.
wget “https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/3/F/93FCF1E7-E6A4-478B-96E7-D4B285925B00/vc_redist.x64.exe"
cabextract vc_redist.x64.exe
cabextract a10
cp ucrtbase.dll /home/$USER/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1466860/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/I don't know if that's needed anymore, but for me the game has run stable for quite some hours now, playing multiplayer matches and playing single player. No need to wait really.
fearnflavio Nov 10, 2021
Quoting: Liam DaweAll ProtonDB reports are from before this Proton Experimental update. As the article states, it worked fine on NVIDIA here.
Yes, sorry I wasn't clear. I was meaning Forza Horizon 5.
Do you know if it is working on Nvidia?
Quoting: fearnflavioQuoting: nepoGreat news, thanks alot!
Edit: Uhm... quite expensive
Yes, same.
I really want to play this one and Forza Horizon 5 but could not find anyone showing it running fine on Nvidia and the game is quite expensive.
Saw a video of a guy running it on a Radeon Rx but on ProtonDB it still borked.
Forza Horizon 5 videos/tests that shows it working on Proton were made with non-legit version.
Currently a Steam copy of Forza Horizon 5 doesn't work without that non-legit executable.
So OOB it is borked.
Quoting: Liam DaweAll ProtonDB reports are from before this Proton Experimental update. As the article states, it worked fine on NVIDIA here.
Good to know, thank you! Anyway, if you don't own a time machine you can't have played really long
. Would be great to know if this run *really* flawlessly, without crashes and with stable multiplayer. If this is *really* the case I could maybe justify the (heavy!) price tag.
Quoting: Spl-itI don't know if that's needed anymore, but for me the game has run stable for quite some hours now, playing multiplayer matches and playing single player. No need to wait really.I did literally nothing other than Proton Experimental. Otherwise the article would note it :)
Quoting: nepoQuoting: Liam DaweAll ProtonDB reports are from before this Proton Experimental update. As the article states, it worked fine on NVIDIA here.
Good to know, thank you! Anyway, if you don't own a time machine you can't have played really long
The fix I posted above has been working for me since the 1st of November, so a good 10 days, I played the game a lot with friends online, no time machine required ;) just a custom DLL that "fixed" the wrong rendering issue.
I think no manual labor is needed anymore with proton-experimental now, so it should be "all good"
EDIT: As Liam mentioned, no extra fix needed, just proton-experimental.
Last edited by Spl-it on 10 November 2021 at 1:27 pm UTC
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