danieltonb
Published
Game runs perfectly
Game works perfectly with no tweaking required on this system.
Game does not start at all
Tried installing libs, switching distros, nothing worked
Tried various tweaks, including several things mentioned on the Arch Wiki, protontricks, various Proton launch options, and nothing worked on this system. I even tried Mint and Fedora, the only other distros that currently have driver support on this computer, and they didn't work either. I bought this game after seeing the positive reports here and on YouTube, but it just crashes whenever I attempt to launch the game. The game does start on a laptop I have, but that laptop only has integrated graphics, so it's unplayable there.
Game does not start at all, unless I run it through the Windows version of Steam via Lutris
Tried all sorts of different things, including Proton-GE, and the game won't run in Proton, but if I install the Windows version of Steam in Lutris using Wine-GE, it works.
Tried various tweaks, including several things mentioned on the Arch Wiki, different versions of Proton, Proton GE, protontricks, various Proton launch options, and nothing worked on this system. I even tried Mint and Fedora, the only other distros that currently have driver support on this computer, and they didn't work either. I bought this game after seeing the positive reports here and on YouTube, but it just crashes whenever I attempt to launch the game. The game does start on a laptop I have via the native Steam, but that laptop only has integrated graphics, so it's unplayable there.
However, as a last-ditch effort, I tried installing the Windows version of Steam using Lutris and its provided Wine-GE, and the game actually runs great that way. I'm honestly not sure why it works this way but not through Proton.
Got a Steam update, and now everything works perfectly with the default Proton settings.
I was able to get both the native Linux build and the Windows version working on Steam with minimal tinkering. However, the native build is limited to 1920x1080 resolution on my system. Since I have a 4K monitor, I tried the Windows version in Proton, and I was able to get 4K. Not sure why the native build is limited to 1080p. There are some graphical glitches if you enable DirectX 12 in Proton, but everything looks fine with the default DirectX setting.
The config tool requires dotnet20 to run. I had to run "protontricks 203650 dotnet20 --no-bwrap" because the runtime will not install with the default bwrap containerization.
Audio works fine with "PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%" launch options.
As others have pointed out, use either dll-files.com or winetricks to download the 32-bit versions of D3DCompiler_43.dll and D3DX9_43.dll and put them in the directory that Sonic CD was installed to. The game seems to run perfectly after that.
This game requires a bit of work to get going but seems to run fine after installing its dependencies and disabling esync. First, you need to find and download "jre-6u45-windows-i586.exe" Next, I had to run WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/202530/pfx" WINEARCH=win64 wine ~/Downloads/jre-6u45-windows-i586.exe followed by WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/202530/pfx" WINEARCH=win64 winetricks msxml3 vcrun2010 d3dx9 and disable esync. You'll probably need to adjust these for your distro, since I'm on Ubuntu 19.04 at the moment. It does run fine after all this though.
I had to run
protontricks 202530 msxml3 d3dx9 vcrun2010
to install dependencies required by the game
Sound is completely borked without "PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%" (without quotes) in startup options
The game launcher, as downloaded on Steam, depends on an old version of Java that is no longer supported. The game itself does not need Java. Replace SonicLauncher.exe with the one from here to avoid the Java requiement: https://github.com/darealshinji/sonic-4-launcher
Once I did all of this, the game works.
Replace the launcher executable with one that doesn't require Java
Some stuttering
This game, as shipped, has a launcher that depends on an old version of Java. However, the actual game does not require Java at all. Go to https://github.com/darealshinji/sonic-4-launcher and download the latest (either GCC or MSVC will work), and replace ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Sonic\ the\ Hedgehog\ 4\ EP\ 1/SonicLauncher.exe with the one from GitHub. Once you do that, it works fine.
It's worth noting that this is a tweak would need to be done on Windows 10 and 11 as well.
If you have audio problems, putting this in the launch options should help: PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
As someone else stated, this game requires dotnet20 to run and esync to be disabled. On Ubuntu 19.04, I achieved this with by running WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/203650/pfx" WINEARCH=win64 winetricks dotnet20 -- you may need to adjust this for your distro. The game and config tool run perfectly from Steam after you do this and disable esync.
Game plays out of the box, but audio sometimes stutters
Stuttering
Game worked perfectly on one of my systems, but on my desktop, the audio stutters. If this happens to you, putting this in the launch options should fix it: PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x20000000 gamemoderun %command%
The game crashes within two minutes unless I modify the launch options.
For some reason, the game crashes when Unreal Engine tries to contact the Epic Games servers if you don't do one of the following tweaks. The first option is to change the launch parameters to this:
OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x20000000 gamemoderun %command%
The other option is to edit /etc/hosts and add these two lines:
0.0.0.0 datarouter.ol.epicgames.com
0.0.0.0 datarouter-weighted.ol.epicgames.com
Once you do either of these things, the game runs great!
