AceChroma2000
Published
Mouse cursor texture was corrupt.
Multiplayer not tested.
%command% -unlockfps
Tested multiple controllers, none of them worked.
Average online performance plus controller issues
My controller didn't work at all if I was Player 2 (Switch Pro Controller used).
Clicking on the camera icon in the settings menu crashes the game.
I wasn't able to start playing on native, it appears to be pretty much borked. The game window wasn't displaying properly, like it was in the wrong spot and there was a green box on my screen where it should've been. The Windows version via Proton runs great though!
Game runs well OOB with only a couple of little bugs
Fullscreen window clips under taskbar
Logging back in after the system locks causes the game window to go black, sound still plays but no inputs can be entered. Game must be restarted to fix.
Would not start regardless of Proton version
When trying older versions of Proton (4.2-9 and bellow), it said on steam that I was playing the game, however it never actually opened. All versions above 4.2-9 and Proton GE did not do this.
Ran well during my short playtime
Alt tabbing will occasionally crash the game.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
The game is prone to random crashes OOB, on GE versions past 7-20 and other versions of standard proton. This didn't happen every match, but when it did it was typically after a round or two.
PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=1 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=0 gamemoderun %command%
Crashes within a matter of minutes of entering gameplay on NVIDIA GPUs, rendering the game basically unplayable. I was able to complete the tutorial, browse the car shop and even do a couple of events... but that's about it. From what I've read, the crashes can be solved by capping the fps as low as 30, but at that point, why? Why would I go out of my way to make my gameplay experience significantly worse just for the sake of playing it under Linux, when I can just play it in my GPU passthrough Windows VM?
The Xbox sign in window is really buggy, it almost never responds to inputs and often closes after clicking it too many times. You can still sign in if you fight with it enough, but it's a real pain.
Additional note for Flatpak users: As fellow user NearlyEpic also observed, this game has a character limit of 59 for its install directory for some reason. Flatpak installs will break this limit and as a result, the game will not start. This can be fixed by creating a separate folder with a really short name within your steam directory, typically located at ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/. Next, add the folder you just created as a Steam Library in the "Storage" section of Steam's settings menu and install or move the game to the new Library. After this, the game should start no problem.
Game would crash upon loading into any game, both singleplayer and multiplayer.
Downloading and extracting addons and such would constantly hang for no apparent reason, I had to restart the game in order to continue the process.
Running the game via proton, it runs flawlessly and fixes the issues mentioned above.
Native works perfectly fine if you don't mind the occasional flickering texture
Some textures for wall decorations and other set pieces are prone to flickering. This is most noticeable in The Escapists and Space Station levels.
Controller not tested.
Micro stuttering during some cutscenes and frame drops during gameplay. However, the latter almost disappeared entirely the more I played. This was reproducible by reinstalling the game or switching to another version of proton.
Game crashed a few times due to running out of video memory, this mainly occurred when alt tabbing.
Everything above I believe is proton related, but I did experience other issues like pop-in, texture flickering and a few other little bugs. However, I've read that this port isn't the greatest, and these issues appear to occur on windows and other platforms as well.
Proton-6.21-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Proton-6.21-GE-2
Radio stations very occasionally only played in the left ear, switching to a different station to fixed this.
Alt tabbing back into the game opens the character switcher, it will remain open until you press alt again.
Proton-6.21-GE-2 also helped with reducing stuttering. I did not test the online mode.
Runs flawlessly when VSync is disabled
Game stutters quite heavily when VSync is enabled, disabling fixes immediately.
Crashed once when loading a new level.
Unplayable with the vast majority of controllers, which is kind of a requirement for this game
Any controllers other than genuine Xbox controllers are guaranteed to drop inputs constantly, making them pretty much unusable (I used a Switch Pro Controller). Considering the fact that controller is recommended by the game and that the keyboard controls are vastly inferior in every single way, this is a pretty big issue in my opinion.
If you have a genuine Xbox controller, or simply prefer the keyboard controls, you won't have any issues with this game. The issue is, most people do not fall into that camp. Therefore, not recommended.
The EA app wouldn't launch most of the time, I would just get a small window comprised of a garbled mishmash of stuff from my taskbar. It wouldn't go away easily either, I had to kill it manually from task manager.
Online worked a grand total of once, it actually ran quite well too. After that, however, I was unable to send or receive any invites too and from my partner. After almost 30 minutes of trying to get it to work, I gave up.
I didn't bother testing local multiplayer, but judging by other reports, I doubt that would've been much better.
PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 gamemoderun %command%
Alt-Tabbing was a bit scuffed, it always took a couple of tries to actually get back into the game and sometimes would display incorrectly on my other monitor. However, the latter only happened when I was tabbed into another application on that screen.
Seemingly better than Windows
My partner (running Windows 11) was crashing constantly, while my experience was flawless, somehow...
Switched from Native to Proton.
Cloud saves not working.
Multiplayer didn't go too well on Native, it would constantly kick me out of games after just a couple of minutes. At first I thought it was on my end, however, it didn't happen once on Proton, even when connecting with someone from across the world.
gamemoderun PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%
Slight stuttering when moving at high speeds and/or when a lot is going on at a given time.
Two minor issues, otherwise runs great
The music in the end credits doesn't play.
When playing with higher Viewmodel FOVs, the textures on Chell's hands are missing and have the checkered pink and black texture instead.
-vulkan
The native Linux version doesn't appear to play very nicely with more than one monitor when running with OpenGL. The game for some reason considers the combined resolution of all the displays as the native resolution. See the input section for the issues this caused (changing the resolution to what it should be didn't fix anything).
Navigating the menus was a real pain due to the above mentioned issues. When in the game, it's absolutely fine, but the menus can be a nightmare due to the buttons being misaligned with the menus.
Switching from OpenGL to Vulkan fixed the above issues. Co-op mode not tested.
Ignoring the obvious performance issues (which isn't a problem exclusive to Proton, the game just runs really badly in general), talking strictly compatibility wise, it runs fine enough.
PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 gamemoderun %command% -vulkan -USEALLAVAILABLECORES -cpuLoadRebalancing -high -ignorepipelinecache
Minor artifacts that are most noticeable with horse hair and shadows.
The game crashes quite liberally due to the ERR_GFX_STATE error and from what I've read, it seems to be an issue exclusive to NVIDIA users. Granted, some missions and cutscenes are worse than others, but there are certain points where progression basically relied on me getting lucky and not crashing before a given mission ended, rendering the game almost unplayable at times.
I tried to push through the crashes, but I just couldn't do it. I tried every fix I could find on here, none of them worked. It's a real shame because outside of that, the game runs great performance wise and I encountered very little issues. If you're an NVIDIA user, be prepared for some rough waters.
gamemoderun %command% -USEALLAVAILABLECORES -cpuLoadRebalancing -high -ignorepipelinecache
Minor artifacts that are most noticeable with horse hair and shadows.
Switching Proton versions has a tendency to break the Rockstar Launcher install, this will prevent the game from launching all together. The only way I was able to fix it was reinstalling the game.
It takes a bit of work if you're an NVIDIA user, but you can get this game to run smoothly. The ERR_GFX_STATE error is a pretty common problem with NVIDIA GPUs and whatever fixes it appears to vary from system to system. From my experience, the culprit appears to be enabling DLSS (PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1), on top of that the game doesn't seem to start at all anymore with the PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 launch option and the Rockstar Launcher will not install properly on Proton version 6.3-8. Since removing those launch options, I haven't experienced a single crash! Both on my old Mint install and since I switched to Fedora.
gamemoderun %command%
Proton 6.3-8 yielded the best performance, I also ran the game with Feral Gamemode: https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode
Proton-6.21-GE-2
In game music doesn't work at all due to a lack of WMA support on linux. In addition, when playing with standard proton, the audio from the company logos and the main menu was extremely distorted and ear blaring.
Fullscreen window clips under the taskbar on Xfce.
Mouse movement of any kind will cause heavy stuttering.
Proton-6.21-GE-2
gamemoderun %command% -high -USEALLAVAILABLECORES
Lag spikes once in a blue moon.
Lag spikes were much more frequent OOB, it was still very much playable but nowhere near as smooth. I would strongly recommend using the launch options above in order to get the smoothest experience.
$(echo %command% | sed -r "s/proton waitforexitandrun .*/proton waitforexitandrun/") "$STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH/SA2ModManager.exe"
Installed vcrun2010 and vcrun2019
System notifications cause a second of lag when they appear and disappear.
I experienced some crashes when trying to play the story mode with mods, usually after cutscenes. The stage select, boss rush and kart race modes ran with no issues.
The launch option above will redirect steam to the mod manager upon pressing play. Make sure to force the mod manager to run with Proton.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d8=n,b" %command%
The game audio is prone to randomly increasing in volume to the point where it genuinely hurt my ears and left me with a mild headache afterwards. This seems to be an issue exclusive to those using BetterSADX. If this doesn't bother you then that's ok, but I had to stop playing all together. Just make sure to keep your volume low, ESPECIALLY if you use headphones.
In order to install BetterSADX and get the mod loader working, heres what you need to do: First, download BetterSADX, add it as a Non-Steam game, force it to run through Proton and go through the setup as normal. Next, add another Non-Steam game, this time being the mod loader which you should find inside the game's install folder. Then, once more force the mod loader run with Proton and you should be good to go. If you use the lantern engine mod, you may need to download an extra dll file and copy it into the game's install folder in order for the mod to work properly. You can find it here: https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9
Crackling audio during the opening and ending cinematics.
Occasional stuttering during gameplay as well as general sluggishness during both cinematics.
Was unable to start play OOB (black screen issue as seen by other users), but after following the instructions in xerz's report it ran well enough.
Black screen with no sound, just a mouse cursor
Tried various Proton versions and launch options.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 gamemoderun %command%
Performance OOTB was very poor with quite heavy stuttering during gameplay. Disabling Esync and Fsync helped a lot, it didn't fix it completely mind you, but it made the game run significantly better.
I didn't spend too much time going back to this one, but out of the random assortment of stages I tested, it ran mostly fine after tinkering.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 gamemoderun %command%
Textures and shaders are prone to flickering randomly, really badly at times too with artifacts also beings present at times. In addition, while this game does suffer pop-in on windows and other platforms, on Linux it's even worse. More often than not, some textures and most objects wouldn't load in until I was pretty much right on top of them.
I was barely able to achieve 60fps most of the time, the frame rate would tank significantly the moment anything remotely technical appeared on screen, which is unheard of for this class of hardware.
Making a large Cyloop will crash the game. Worst of all, however, the game would always crash, without fail, during the Grave Mystery puzzle on Kronos Island. This made it impossible for me to progress.
I have since tested this game in my Windows 11 virtual machine and that is where I will be continuing my playthrough for the foreseeable future, as none of the issues I mentioned are present on Windows.
Now runs flawlessly on NVIDIA GPUs
As of June 2023, thanks to a patch on SEGA's end, the game now runs flawlessly on NVIDIA GPU's with no tinkering required.
Tried various fixes, no luck
PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_USE_D9VK=1 %command%
Game wouldn't start if it was using any proton version after 4.11-13. Once I did get it going however, it ran very well with no issues at all.
Runs extremely well
The application does not close properly when exiting and has to be killed manually.
Not a very pleasant experience
Most voice lines longer than a couple of seconds will just be cut off rather abruptly.
Game stutters very heavily during gameplay, the frequency varies depending on the track and it does calm down after a couple of laps, but either way it's far from being a smooth experience.
I tested a random assortment of tracks, most of which crashed the game. This occurred either when first loading in, randomly during a race or when trying to exit to menu.
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 %command%
Cutscene audio was out of sync without the above launch option.
Flatpak users beware, Level 2 is a nightmare on the Flatpak version of Steam
For whatever reason, Karate Downtown Bikini Bottom is a nightmare when running the Flatpak version of Steam due to frequent crashing, so much so that it is genuinely hard to progress at times. I have no idea why this happens, it doesn't occur at all on the native version of Steam and no other level exhibits this strange behaviour. All I can say is, thank god for autosaves.
I understand that the vast majority of people are NOT running Steam as a Flatpak, so this game can be comfortably recommended for most people thanks to its flawless performance and the fact you can just install and play with no tinkering necessary.
Stutters every now and then, but otherwise runs perfectly
gamemoderun %command% -USEALLAVAILABLECORES -high -novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars -noquicktime
Installed Ultra mastercomfig with OpenGL optimizations addon: https://mastercomfig.com/
If you use Fedora like me, you may find that some audio, such as class voice lines and music are missing due to SELinux not allowing executable heap memory by default. To fix this, enter the following command into the terminal; sudo setsebool -P allow_execheap 1
Mouse sensitivity for character inspection in the backpack is insanely high for some reason.
Proton-6.21-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Intro video wouldn't play without mf-install, however when it did play it was slowed down and the audio and video were out of sync.
Controller inputs didn't work at all without Proton GE. The controller I used was a Switch Pro Controller.
Online multiplayer appears to be completely dead, was unable to find a game and test it.
Almost perfect with one minor bug
When alt tabbing back into fullscreen, the mouse can't be moved to the bottom of the screen which prevents access to the settings button. Pressing Alt+Enter to go windowed, then pressing it once more to go back to fullscreen fixes the issue.
Just works
Remote Play Together with my partner who uses Windows, worked perfectly with zero issues.
