Game fixes

hdansin

The gaming experience is pretty good on Solus but I've run into a few quirks with certain games. This is partly a reference for me as well as hopefully helping others out. Feel free to comment in the thread with other fixes for games that aren't listed.

Civilization V (Steam version)

Go to the game files (in Steam: properties > browse local files), navigate to the steamassets folder, do a search for any .mov files, and rename them whatever you want (I just renamed them all to "broken.mov"). Apparently the video format they use for all the intros causes it to crash.

Reference

Civilization VI (Steam version)

Go to the game files (In Steam: properties > browse local files) and open Civ6 with a text editor. Replace the line that says ./GameGuide/Civ6 with ./Civ6Sub. Save it and launch the game from steam.

If Civ 6 updates itself you may have to do this again. For some reason the launcher that Civ 6 tries to open didn't work for me, and it basically looked like the game was just crashing on start, but you can launch it directly by running ./Civ6Sub.

Reference

Killing Floor 2 (Steam Proton)

Disable the in-game voice chat. I was getting random crashes in multiplayer until I did this. Go to the game files (in Steam: properties > browse local files), navigate to KFGame/Config, and follow the instructions in the Github link. You won't be able to hear random people but having a stable game is more important to me.

Reference

Borderlands 2 (Epic Store)

I got Borderlands 2 for free on the epic store to play with friends. Initially just launching it through the Epic Games launcher in Lutris worked but it stopped working. I found a fix for it however by using Legendary. Here are the steps I followed:

Install Lutris (available in the repo) and install the Epic Games Store.
Login and install Borderlands 2.
Navigate to the game files and find Borderlands2.exe and Launcher.exe in the Win32 directory. Delete Launcher.exe and rename Borderlands2.exe to Launcher.exe. At this point you can try and launch from Epic. If it works you can ignore the rest of this. Mine would get to the splash screen and crash.
Download Legendary and make it executable by doing chmod +x legendary on the command line.
Follow the instructions on the Legendary Github to authenticate.
Import Borderlands 2 by running legendary import-game Dodo /path/to/Borderlands2. This will be in the wine prefix created by Lutris, which you can find by clicking on the Epic Games Store in Lutris and clicking on the file browser button.
Run the game with legendary launch Dodo
(optional). Add the game to Lutris by listing Legendary as the executable and launch Dodo as the arguments.

PoorPocketsMcNewHold

Thanks immensely for the Killing Floor 2 fix. It’s been for years, and actually, multiple distro hopping (Not due to that alone, but I was thinking it was a dependency of some distro).
Outside that, here's some more general tips for Gaming on Solus (And other distributions really).

Winetricks

Allow some specific WINE modifications for some proton launched, games.
sudo eopkg install winetricks

Protontricks

Allow some specific WINE modifications for some proton launched, games.
sudo eopkg install protontricks

Protonfixes

Allow for some automated games tinkering and configurations on first launch.
sudo eopkg install python3 pip python-appdirs python-setuptools kdialog zenity && sudo pip3 install protonfixes

Boxtron

Allow for some games, to be played in the natively installed dosbox.
sudo eopkg install dosbox inotify-tools sdl1-sound && cd ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ || cd ~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/ && curl -L https://github.com/dreamer/boxtron/releases/latest/download/boxtron.tar.xz | sudo tar xJf -
If it claims that it doesn’t found the compatibilitytools.d folder, create it yourself in either :
~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ or
~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/
Restart steam, and select it manually for your game as a custom Proton version.

Roberta

Allow for some games, to be played in the natively installed scumvm.
sudo eopkg install libmad scummvm inotify-tools && cd ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ || cd ~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/ && curl -L https://github.com/dreamer/roberta/releases/latest/download/roberta.tar.xz | sudo tar xJf -
If it claims that it doesn’t found the compatibilitytools.d folder, create it yourself in either :
~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ or
~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/
Restart steam, and select it manually for your game as a custom Proton version.

Luxtorpeda

Allow for some games, to be played in the native Linux alternative game engines, they are downloaded and installed when first launched.
cd ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ || cd ~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/ && curl -L https://luxtorpeda.gitlab.io/luxtorpeda/master/luxtorpeda.tar.xz | sudo tar xJf -
If it claims that it doesn’t found the compatibilitytools.d folder, create it yourself in either :
~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/ or
~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/
Restart steam, and select it manually for your game as a custom Proton version.

hdansin

PoorPocketsMcNewHold Glad it helped!

bleh

PoorPocketsMcNewHold This was a game changer for me. I only really play brawlhalla and doing all this had the game instantly running better than it ever did when I had windows on my machine. Nothing ran via steam before I did this. Would be great if the help center had a game setup page with this info, would have saved me a lot of time.

Junglist

Music doesn't play for me when using Boxtron (to be specific, the game I've tried it with is Star Wars Dark Forces), other sounds do play, but the lack of music is killing the experience.

Do you know maybe how to fix it?

PoorPocketsMcNewHold

Junglist Yep. Forgot to add fluid-soundfont as a dependency. Does anybody know why i can´t update my post to reflect that ?

synth-ruiner

anyone had any luck with X-Com 2: War of the Chosen? I played it fine via Proton on Linux Mint a couple of years ago, and there's even a native Linux version now, but I couldn't get either version working on Solus recently.

YuriTheHenrique

synth-ruiner I have it, and I can confirm it doesn't play from steam... To play it, It is needed to enter game files and start the binary from the terminal.
but before I could play it, I had to install some dependencies, I don't really remember which... ldd the binary and see what is missing, after that eopkg sf "missing library" and install the package with the name.

It plays well, but unfortunately the video cutscenes shows a black screen with sounds, you can watch them from game files.
:/ I have contacted firaxis and they said this is a steam problem with built-in libraries, and they do not support native libraries from the system for various reasons, so steam should update it's libraries to solve this problem.

zmaint

synth-ruiner
Use the linux steam integration tool and select the steam libraries instead of native. Feral is using older libraries that causes it to crash on start.

Junglist

PoorPocketsMcNewHold Unfortunately I already had this package installed.

The music works when I used Lutris to play the game, but via Boxtron - no dice.

PS:
You can't edit posts once someone replies after you.

Junglist

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Steam, native version)

This fixes the unending black screen (the game doesn't even go into the menu, nothing appears).

Edit this file: /steamapps/common/Shadow of the Tomb Raider/ShadowOfTheTombRaider.sh

Replace this line in the .sh file:
${GAME_LAUNCH_PREFIX} ${GAME_SIGNAL_WRAPPER} "${GAMEROOT}/bin/${FERAL_GAME_NAME}" "$@"

Replace it with this line:
LC_ALL=C ${GAME_LAUNCH_PREFIX} ${GAME_SIGNAL_WRAPPER} "${GAMEROOT}/bin/${FERAL_GAME_NAME}" "$@"

PoorPocketsMcNewHold

Postal 4 : No Regerts

I currently do QA testing for Running With Scissors on this game, especially on Linux. I may share some fixes for it currently.
Fix video cutscenes not playing (Via proton)
The video cutscenes are in .mp4 and can be easily be watched from the game folder, so what's the issue there?
Well, Unreal Engine seems to require the Media Foundation codecs in order to do so, without it, and it will only play the sound of the video.
Currently, Media Foundation codecs has been merged into wine, but I’m uncertain if it has been, in the latest Proton versions. According to issue #1464 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1464#issuecomment-710094016 https://github.com/HonkingGoose/proton_codecs_media_support_tracker/blob/main/tables/media_foundation.md_

If you still experience it, do so :
Clone the mf-install GitHub repo
Via git git clone https://github.com/z0z0z/mf-install
Via gh gh repo clone z0z0z/mf-install
Via svn svn checkout https://github.com/z0z0z/mf-install
Or just straight up download the repo and extract it from somewhere on your device.

Then, check where your Postal 4 game is installed, and copy the steamapps folder path.
Open a terminal prompt and do this command :
WINEPREFIX="PASTEYOURLOCATIONTOsteamapps/compatdata/707030/pfx" ./mf-install.sh
Replace obviously the PASTEYOURLOCATIONTOsteamapps with your steamapps file path.
Let it install its thing, and it should work!

Fix missing sound
I know for that particular one, that can happen to Unreal Engine 4 games in general.
I would suggest this is caused by Epic, dropping voluntary support for older Windows operating systems, has this issue started to appear quite along the time, that some Windows 7 users were reporting the same issue.
Ironically however, The fix for us, GNU/Linux users, is to... change the wine prefix of this game to Windows 7 (Yeah, I don’t know why either).
Install protontricks and input the following command :
protontricks 707030 win7
(Note for those trying this fix for other UE4 games, obviously replace 707030 by the corresponding steam id of your game. Look at your game Steam page URL to found it)

For Gog users running the game via wine, you can do the same with winetricks instead.
winetricks SELECTYOURPOSTAL4PREFIX win7

Laggy audio with Bluetooth headset
just disconnect & reconnect your headset, lol
No seriously, this fix the issue where the game/pulseaudio doesn’t correctly process the audio coming from it.

hdansin

Halo: The Master Chief Collection (Steam Proton)

The latest update broke fullscreen and borderless mode, which means if you were running it on that (like me) the game will crash at start with a UE4 error. Steps to fix:

Open the local files (in Steam: properties > browse local files) and navigate to SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/976730/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/MCC/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/GameUserSettings.ini
Open GameUserSettings.ini with a text editor and find the line that says FullscreenMode=# and change # to 2. It should read FullscreenMode=2
Save the changes, close the text editor, and it should launch.
I was able to run it in 'fullscreen' with the window manager (default shortcut is usually F11) without any issues.

Source

I also recommend using the latest Proton build by Glorious Eggroll. Instructions for installation are on Github.

Harvey

In case people are unaware https://www.protondb.com has a lots of Linux community advice on getting games running on Steam.

[deleted]

Harvey ProtonDB has no affiliation with Valve Software.
That should be highlighted though.

Tjay

Can this topic maybe get a sticky or a link to this topic on the "Help Center" page, this could help allot of people.

JoshStrobl

[deleted] I'm not sure how any affiliation or lackthereof is of relevance.

[deleted]

JoshStrobl Keeping information accurate. Someone might think for example that by posting info there is helping valve for example.

hdansin

Black Mesa

I found out that the native linux version has very poor performance compared to running it with proton, not to mention having missing graphics features. In order to force steam to run it with proton go to properties > compatibility, and check "force the use of a specific steam play compatibility tool." In addition, enter -oldgameui in the launch options. I ran it with the latest proton by Glorious Eggroll and had a stable 60 FPS where it was dropping to 15 natively.

I'm still kind of baffled that the proton version runs so much better. If it runs that poorly, than why even say it supports linux at all?

Staudey

hdansin Yeah, pretty much the same situation for Dying Light, or at least used to be like that when I played it.

hdansin

Battlefield 4

Runs alright with Proton even though Origin is buggy, but that is a problem even on windows. The problem is with multiplayer. Some servers were kicking me because I had a missing ping. Run the following commands to fix (you will need to find where the version of proton you are using is located, this will not work if you just copy paste these commands):

sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 5.13/dist/bin/wineserver
sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 5.13/dist/bin/wine-preloader
sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 5.13/dist/bin/wine64-preloader

You may need to re-run the commands if you switch proton versions or update. Note that custom Protons (such as GE's) may have a slightly different directory structure. Look for the bin folder, which contains wineserver, wine-preloader and wine64-preloader.

Source

hdansin

The latest GE-Proton has a fix for the Battlefield 4 ping issue. Haven't tested it yet but it is easier than running those commands.

alanwake82

hdansin

Thanks for these commands, helps me in Battlefield 4