Martenzo
Published
Fails to launch
Fails to launch. No error messages.
Game opens a window, but immediately crashes
First, delete the compatdata folder $SteamPath/steamapps/compatdata/727570
Then use Steam properties to force the game to use Proton 4.11-13 and launch the game to create a clean compatdata folder with the older version.
With this clean prefix, protontricks can successfully install dotnet packages that no longer work on newer version of proton/wine.
Install the dotnet472 and xna40 packages with protontricks.
The game will now actually start and open the initial loading screen, but immediately go into a more graceful crash that produces an error-report pop-up that I was not able to figure out a fix for.
Perhaps with this starting point, someone else will be more successful than I was getting this game to work.
Fails to Launch
Gave another try due to recent updates to both the game and Proton. Still broken OotB.
Remains borked with Proton 9.0 (beta)
Made another attempt after 9.0 (beta) became an option for Proton version. Remains borked OotB.
Minor artifacts with some glow effects on the world map.
For Proton to successfully install the .NET package, I had to forced Steam to use Proton 4.11 on the first launch of the game. Then, for better stability and perfomance, I set Proton to version 8.0. Since I first tried to install with the latest version, as suggested by other reports, I had to delete my compatdata/1669000/ folder to force Steam to create a clean compatdata for the game with Proton 4.11; setting it to 4.11 after a .NET install has already failed with a more recent version does not recover the situation.
6.5-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Cutscenes do not play and the game appears to hang after starting a campaign, but skipping the cutscene by holding spacebar actually continues on to the initial mission of the campaign.
And then the game consistently softlocks after spending a few minutes on the campaign map after completing the initial battle, as the UI becomes unresponsive. Might be some kind of menu layering issue that causes the issue, but it makes the game effectively unplayable in single player mode.
7.0rc3-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
When on the single player campaign map, the game forces itself back to the main menu without warning. Unlike in my previous report, this is no longer a softlock of the game: with an immediate quicksave after each campaign battle, it's now possible, if frustrating, to progress in the single player campaign.
Single Player battles work fine and seem to be completely stable. Only the campaign map has issues.
7.0rc3-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
With the listed Proton GE release and setting the -noEAC launch flag option, the single player campaign works without any gameplay issues. The only remaining bug I notices was cutscenes, which sometimes (but not always) have the audio playing before the video starts (resulting in the whole cutscene video playing off-sync).
Hangs during world generation
Even following the information from other reports, always freezes at some point during world generation. Game has to be killed or force-quit externally to close it, which can be troublesome when resolution is set to fullscreen.
No bugs that aren't already present when running natively.
Described below, alongside a general performance drop.
After two to three hours of continuous play, audio becomes choppy and the graphics/UI become sluggish and less responsive. However, I recall encountering this exact issue even when running the original DOS game natively on DOS, as well as on dosbox regardless of the host OS, so it's probably unrelated to Proton. Resolved by saving, exiting and restarting the game.
Like several other Slitherine games that have a launcher, the launcher throws a harmless error about failing to detect system language, which defaults to English as the error is acknowledged.
With an out-of-the-box Proton 6.3 install, cutscenes are still broken, but instead of a black screen that you have to click to get past, the video now displays a color-bar screen for a couple of seconds while audio plays the actual audio of the cutscene. At that point, the cutscene cancels on its own without needing user action. Much better than the black screen that looked like the game has hung up (especially since not every key press skips the cutscene and continues on).
Actually getting the cutscenes to work still requires Proton GE. Despite many attempts, installing Media Foundation libraries to Proton 6.3 only resulted in the black screens making a comeback.
Proton 6.5-GE-2
After an hour of play, the only bug I noticed was a known native bug in the tutorial missions that can stop the tutorial from progressing. Game is still in early access, so those are par for the course. Otherwise runs fine without any noticeable performance or graphical problems.
Followed the instructions in the reports of butter blaster and bah. The only difference was that gdiplus would not install through protontricks, due to a download failure. Instead, I downloaded GdiPlus.dll manually and placed it in ".steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1154840/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/". Installing dotnet472 through protontricks can take a long time, but works.
Don't do what I did and Ctrl-C the protontricks dotnet installation just because the installer looks like it's stuck and the command line output looks like it might be looping over the same error over and over. This will break the proton environment set for Shadow Empire, and requires an uninstall of the game, a manual deletion of the game's compatdata folder followed by a reinstall to fix.
Many labels and texts were using fonts much larger than what they would be on Windows, to the point of spilling out of fields assigned to them of being cut off. Does not interfere with gameplay if you're already familiar enough with the game's UI that you don't need the text labels on the bugged UI elements.
The game's end turn sequence was already strangely sluggish on windows for its graphical quality, and became noticeably more so when run through proton. The pause after cliking the button to start your turn, as described by butter blaster, is especially noticeable.
Works perfectly after three tweaks:
First, edit "/steamapps/common/se4/Data/Settings.txt" and change "Allow CD Music" to "FALSE".
Second, run $ protontricks --gui, select the default wineprefix and run wincfg.
In the Graphics tab, enable virtual desktop and set a suitable resolution. I tested 1440x900 (which worked) and 1920x1080 (which did not, for some reason).
In the Applications tab, set the default windows version to Windows XP.
This configuration works with both the vanilla game, as well as the DevNullGold mod that adds a fair amount of content and QoL tweaks to the game.
Playable out-of-the-box (and only out-of-the-box) with the latest Proton.
The game seemed locked to running in a 1024x768 window. Changing the screen resolution in the game's own launcher did not change anything. Tinkering with protontricks to use a virtual desktop or changing windows version to XP caused the game to stop launching entirely, and simply reverting the changes made did not fix the failure to launch. I had to delete the compatdata pfx/ folder to restore the out-of-the-box install that actually manages to launch the game.
6.5-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Proton-6.5-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Installs and runs launcher, crashes when trying to run actual game.
Followed instructions in CrazyKristi's report exactly, including the use of the exact same custom Proton release version (5.9-GE-8-ST), rather than the latest release (6.5-GE-2). Game plays the audio of the initial company splash screen, but immediately freezes with an unhelpful error message and needs to be forcibly stopped from Steam to be closed.
Alt-Tabbing crashes the game.
Cutscenes would often crash, especially longer pre-rendered cutscenes. These crashes could be averted by using Esc to pause the cutscene. Possibly a result of playing the game from an HDD rather than an SSD.
Worked out of the box without any additional tinkering besides Proton GE, but failed to launch on Proton Experimental and Proton 9.0-3 regardless of options suggested in older reports.
