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Dying Light 2 will be easily one of the biggest releases this year and the good news is that it works on Linux without any messing around. Note: personal purchase.

Tested with Steam Play Proton (specifically Proton Experimental), so far the experience has been pretty good, although with a caveat that I've yet to try co-op. At least as far as single-player goes, it works really well. Interestingly for a lot of players on Windows, the game just crashed trying to start the game - no such problem here on Linux.

Showing the true power of Proton as a compatibility layer, having such a high-profile release working out of the box on day-1 is a really fantastic thing for Linux. The original Dying Light is also one of my favourite open-world Zombie-smashers, so it's quite exciting to get to run through Dying Light 2 right away like this.

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Both the DirectX 11 and 12 modes work, although switching from 11 (the default) to 12 did cause a hard lock-up requiring a reboot. After that though, loading back in and it continued working just fine. Performance between the two modes doesn't seem all that different either, at least on NVIDIA with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

Considering how Techland supported the first game for so long, I think we can expect good things for the future of Dying Light 2. Techland have already promised 5+ years of continued support with free DLCs, various in-game events, bigger paid story DLC, new enemies, new weapons and much more.

Something to note is that the game does include Denuvo Anti-tamper, which caused a bit of a ruckus since Techland did not even mention it until right before the launch. Thankfully Denuvo has worked on Linux with Proton for some time now and doesn't appear to cause any playability issues here, although be careful if you switch between Proton versions for testing on Dying Light 2 as it may trip it up.

Be sure to also add -nologos to your Steam launch options, otherwise you'll need to spam button-press to get through annoyingly long logo screens.

You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam.

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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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49 comments
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dpanter Feb 6, 2022
Until Techland fixes rebinding mouse buttons, you can use this nifty tool.
https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper
F.Ultra Feb 6, 2022
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There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
...

Interesting, I've been wondering why for some titles using proton performs better than some native ports; this explanation makes sense to me.

It performed so bad that it can't be due to the api or the bad drivers because:
1 there are examples of opengl games that perform much better
2 Drivers now are fine, but it still performs bad.

Much of the first opengl ports were just bad coded or badly wrapped.

That the first Dying Light performed bad on Linux is news to me, now I don't know how much different it would run on Windows on my hw since I don't have Windows anywhere, but I have 117 hours into the first game and performance for me is extremely good (RX480).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdT3RuL9jQ

So compared with the Windows version the performance is worse but the actual performance is still not horrible but completely fine. Well that matches my experience.
kokoko3k Feb 6, 2022
There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
...

Interesting, I've been wondering why for some titles using proton performs better than some native ports; this explanation makes sense to me.

It performed so bad that it can't be due to the api or the bad drivers because:
1 there are examples of opengl games that perform much better
2 Drivers now are fine, but it still performs bad.

Much of the first opengl ports were just bad coded or badly wrapped.

That the first Dying Light performed bad on Linux is news to me, now I don't know how much different it would run on Windows on my hw since I don't have Windows anywhere, but I have 117 hours into the first game and performance for me is extremely good (RX480).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdT3RuL9jQ

So compared with the Windows version the performance is worse but the actual performance is still not horrible but completely fine. Well that matches my experience.

The performance is very bad compared to windows and proton.
Everything would run well if you have enough cpu and gpu cycles, ofc.
F.Ultra Feb 6, 2022
View PC info
  • Supporter
There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
...

Interesting, I've been wondering why for some titles using proton performs better than some native ports; this explanation makes sense to me.

It performed so bad that it can't be due to the api or the bad drivers because:
1 there are examples of opengl games that perform much better
2 Drivers now are fine, but it still performs bad.

Much of the first opengl ports were just bad coded or badly wrapped.

That the first Dying Light performed bad on Linux is news to me, now I don't know how much different it would run on Windows on my hw since I don't have Windows anywhere, but I have 117 hours into the first game and performance for me is extremely good (RX480).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdT3RuL9jQ

So compared with the Windows version the performance is worse but the actual performance is still not horrible but completely fine. Well that matches my experience.

The performance is very bad compared to windows and proton.
Everything would run well if you have enough cpu and gpu cycles, ofc.

The game having potential for 72fps does not matter much when my screen is 60fps anyway. Now I don't know this is due to the game, the recording, or if it's just YouTube or on my end but the linked video for DL2 stutters from time to time, this I never experienced in DL1 and I would take 30fps over that every single day.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 6 February 2022 at 11:10 pm UTC
kokoko3k Feb 7, 2022
There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
...

Interesting, I've been wondering why for some titles using proton performs better than some native ports; this explanation makes sense to me.


It performed so bad that it can't be due to the api or the bad drivers because:
1 there are examples of opengl games that perform much better
2 Drivers now are fine, but it still performs bad.

Much of the first opengl ports were just bad coded or badly wrapped.

That the first Dying Light performed bad on Linux is news to me, now I don't know how much different it would run on Windows on my hw since I don't have Windows anywhere, but I have 117 hours into the first game and performance for me is extremely good (RX480).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdT3RuL9jQ

So compared with the Windows version the performance is worse but the actual performance is still not horrible but completely fine. Well that matches my experience.

The performance is very bad compared to windows and proton.
Everything would run well if you have enough cpu and gpu cycles, ofc.

The game having potential for 72fps does not matter much when my screen is 60fps anyway. Now I don't know this is due to the game, the recording, or if it's just YouTube or on my end but the linked video for DL2 stutters from time to time, this I never experienced in DL1 and I would take 30fps over that every single day.

The well known downside with proton is that it needs to build his compiled shader cache once per driver; hence the one time stuttering; but it will go away.

Anyway, In the thread, we were talking about "poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton" and what caused it.
Guppy Feb 7, 2022
Not having completed even the base game of the first one is it worth picking this one up?

I mean is there anything new to the game or is it just an "expand-alone" ?
Beamboom Feb 8, 2022
The horror aspect is lessened yes. As much more of the gameplay is focused on nighttime, Techland aimed to make the night more accessible for all players.

Really? That's great news for me, because I found the first game to be way too bloody scary. The missions I were forced to do at nighttime made me quit playing!
Anza Feb 8, 2022
The horror aspect is lessened yes. As much more of the gameplay is focused on nighttime, Techland aimed to make the night more accessible for all players.

Really? That's great news for me, because I found the first game to be way too bloody scary. The missions I were forced to do at nighttime made me quit playing!

For me they were just right amount of scary. I don't play horror games that much, but I guess it helps that Dying Light has enough gameplay in the daytime. Also having incentives to go out during the nighttime gives things a purpose. So on the other hand you don't want to go out during the night, but then again you should as the risk is totally worth it.

With other horror games I might have less patience as it's all horror and the scarier ones are almost entirely walking simulators with some running mixed in.

I guess games should have possible to tone down horror in same way that there's possibility to adjust difficulty. It's hard to have one level suitable for all.


Last edited by Anza on 9 February 2022 at 5:53 pm UTC
Beamboom Feb 9, 2022
I guess games should have possible to tone down horror in same way that there's possibility to adjust difficulty. It's hard to have one level suitable for all.

I actually disagree! Not all games are for all people, nor should they strive to be. Better to be GREAT for some than average for all. :)

And I am really a massive coward when it comes to scary content. A fast moving monster, or something that appears out of nowhere will by default scare the sh*t out of me. But the funny/weird thing is that I am still attracted to those games, I just always - ALWAYS! - end up quitting after a very short time. :D
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