Matrix Games Forums

Has there been any testing of the game in wine? I imagine first party there's been zilch since it sounds like the devs are very windows-centric, but I'm hoping someone in the beta has been giving it a go to see if there are any easy-to-fix showstoppers.

DW1 was notorious for its engine, so I hope that it Just Works with the new engine being "modern", but it'd be nice if this could be checked ahead of release.

Stride engine should compile to linux fine, since its on dotNET6 now I think, though, I don't know how much the dev team here has forked off and never rebased.

There was a post somewhere where they were asking for people to test DW2 under linux during beta. That was the main reason I applied, but I didn't make it in sadly.
It is indeed a good sign that they are using Stride.
Personally I plan to go all out getting it to work on linux once it is released.
Every game I play I can now run in linux, so I don't have a native windows install any more.... apart from DW1.... I have to run DW1 in a windows 7 VM, and that failure has always niggled me. I won't give up with DW2.


*edit* found it...
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... &key=linux&#

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

DW2 is only planned as a Windows release, unfortunately. The engine does not have the ability to run natively on Linux. I don't know how well it will run in emulation on Linux or Mac, but we'll find out before release and testers who have both Windows and Linux/Mac systems to give that a try during beta would be appreciated.

Well, I have a Linux box, and also a new Mac M1 with CrossOver installed. Unfortunately, I don't have the beta! [:D]

Thats too bad, they must have forked from Xenko days then, which will probably run on dotnet framework and probably mono in linux.

On a slightly related note, GeForce Now free tier is something I find myself using more and more lately, enabling me to play some pretty demanding steam games on even my little chrome-book as well as saving my linux gaming laptop from roaring-fan syndrome.
Although I plan to buy DW2 from Matrix directly - if I get a steam key then it will be possible to play it on GeForce Now if it is enabled by the developer.
Apparently it is pretty simple to enable for a Steam game so I really hope that it is done for DW2
I am not trying to detract from linux support. I am pretty sure now with steam-deck compatibility requirements being what they are, that this game working on linux is almost a foregone conclusion.
Just a thought though.

As far as I know DW2 will be on GeForce Now.

While Linux is not officially supported, we'll do what we can to help the Linux community get DW2 working, it just will have to be a lower priority compared to addressing issues on supported OSes. Personally, I'd like to play DW2 on Linux as well.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

As far as I know DW2 will be on GeForce Now.

While Linux is not officially supported, we'll do what we can to help the Linux community get DW2 working, it just will have to be a lower priority compared to addressing issues on supported OSes. Personally, I'd like to play DW2 on Linux as well.

Regards,

- Erik

You just made my day!

A little something about cross platform and .NET:

A it's core, .NET is a interpreter. A runtime. That is actually pretty similar in executeable design to Java (they obviously copied, but actually managed to improove on it to a large degree).

Cross Platform has always been a goal of .NET.
In the ".NET Framework", it was unmitigated disaster. It never worked. The framework grew way to big, way to fast to have any hope of having the full runtime on any other OS.

In the age of the ".NET Framework", your best hope of Platform independance was to target the MONO runtime and work with all the issue that brought.

Also changing the .NET Runtime you target with any programm is the opposite of "trivial". "If you ever go that path, forever will it dominate your destiny".

.NET Core is different. It is a curated subset of things from the Framework that actually worked. It has official runtimes for Linux and MacOS.

Stride can be compiled targetting the .NET Core or .NET Framework. If they have choosen Core at day one or early around it, there is a chance it already runs on Linux and MacOS. Not a big chance. There is still like a billion reasons why this might fail without a Emulator (just the filesystem design differences). But at least the chances are better then the Frameworks 0%.

As long as the game works with proton unlike the first game that would be enough.

Hi all,
I waited so long for Distant Worlds 2 and I hope will be possible to play it on Steam Deck, too..

It would be great..

So far with a causal quick test of trying to launch the game through Proton it seems that you can't get past the launcher.
Unfortunate.

Doesn't get past launcher in Proton.
There is some info in the log file. Can upload somewhere if it would be helpful.
When the matrix version has downloaded I will post my progress getting it to run in wine.

I have made some progress under wine 7.3, using a prefix that I usually use to run problematic .net software.
Unfortunately as far as I can get is a console message spamming:

warn: GetMonitorFormatBpp: Unknown format:

This is a new one to me, and googling isn't immediately encouraging.

Hopefully more soon.

edit. further testing in a windows 7 VM throws up a CLR20r3 error. This could indicate some reliance on (shudder) Windows Media Center components....
Plodding on....
edit... installing wmp11 into the prefix does not help...

That looks like you have to register your Windows too.

Very disappointing. No DW2 for me.

Rhygin00 wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 6:25 pm That looks like you have to register your Windows too.

Very disappointing. No DW2 for me.

There may be something to this.
I did get the matrix version to install and run in a fully registered windows 10 virtual machine. It was unplayable due to the performance, looked like less than 5 FPS, but I didn't check because I am never going to play it like that.

It also isn't appearing in my geForce Now library so... continuing to tweak and try to get it to run somehow.
if I actually get it to run in a playable state I will post here how I did it.

Here is a guide from ProtonDB, from a guy named Lain@X, maybe this works?


Tinker Steps:Custom Proton, protontricks

Ensure you have protontricks installed. If you don't have it, follow the installation guide here[0] (see the pipx titled section)

Go to "Distant World 2" properties, force a specific proton version, select Version "Proton 4.11-13" or anything old enough to still support dotnet45 which is broken in many newer releases (incompatible versions of proton will give a related message and fail to install dotnet)

afterwards, install the game like you would normally do

Try to start the game, to let first time setup run which should install 3/3 packages of software by itself before launching

Launcher opens, if you click "Play" there most likely nothing happens, that is okay

Open a terminal and run:

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 1531540 dotnet472

This will take a quite while, do some downloads and show you maybe half a dozen of windows installation dialogs for different versions of the netframework, starting from 4.0 going all up to 4.72, as the newer versions depend on the older ones. Be sure not to cancel any of them and endure accepting all of Microsoft stupid licenses while installing the software packages

Once dotnet 4.72 is fully installed, launch your game again. This time, clicking "Play" in the Launcher should actually opening the game.

[0] https://github.com/Matoking/protontricks

That does get me past the launcher and through the game setup screen, however it always crashes within a few seconds after generating the galaxy.
This is great news though. It is only a matter of time and effort to get it working well now.

deMangler wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 9:07 pm That does get me past the launcher and through the game setup screen, however it always crashes within a few seconds after generating the galaxy.

For me changing the proton version to the latest GloriousEggroll release fixed the crashing, or at least it didn't crash in the 5 minutes or so I tested, but the game is so incredibly dark that it's unplayable (The darkness also happened in other proton versions). Tough it does seem like it might also be a problem on windows for some people.

ComradeJames wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:08 pm

deMangler wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 9:07 pm That does get me past the launcher and through the game setup screen, however it always crashes within a few seconds after generating the galaxy.

For me changing the proton version to the latest GloriousEggroll release fixed the crashing, or at least it didn't crash in the 5 minutes or so I tested, but the game is so incredibly dark that it's unplayable (The darkness also happened in other proton versions). Tough it does seem like it might also be a problem on windows for some people.

Look here and scroll down:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/ ... 122/?ctp=3

There are settings files for brightness, the guys are discussing what to change. The whole thread was started by Lain@X too, might be interesting.