Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I’m a new GNU/Linux user (primarily use Ubuntu-based distros) and I would like to provide insight on how to maximize performance using Wine and AMD Hardware for Guild Wars2. I spent roughly 8 months testing various commands and arguments, hardware, and performance. I created this post on WineHQ as well to ensure that there is a record of these tests in various places so that people can enjoy GW2 in GNU/Linux.

I would rate Guild Wars 2 as a solid GOLD+. I have been playing the game for 8+ months and performance for AMD hardware is not great without the tweaks below.

I have used an AMD 5870m in an Alienware laptop throughout my playtime and now average between 16-60 FPS. The worst area of the game is the Maguuma zones. The Maguuma zones drop my framerate to around 16 and sometimes less.

I used Xubuntu 16.04 with Oibaf PPA, Wine+Gallium Nine (Direct 3D tracker), Radeon-Profile, and various arguments that are built into Guild Wars 2, they are:

PPAs:
Oibaf: ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
Gallium Nine Dev Tree: ppa:oibaf/gallium-nine
Wine+Nine: ppa:commendsarnex/winedri3
(Follow instructions, ensure DRI3 is enabled and you use winecfg to use Gallium Nine)
Radeon-Profile: ppa:trebelnik-stefina/radeon-profile
(Use “Auto” and “Performance”)

-forwardrenderer
-dx9single
-assetsrv 174.35.71.9:80
-autoplay

The -forwardrenderer argument specifically targets AMD GPUs and increases my framerate dramatically (THANK YOU ANET). Without it, I lose roughly 10-15 FPS. The -dx9single argument tends to give me more consistent gameplay event after changing the CPU governor to “performance” without using it. The -assetsrv stops the launcher from crashing and will make it download EVERYTHING without ever crashing! I have used this argument in fullscreen and virtual desktop, everything downloads and runs perfect. The argument -autoplay simply launches the game automatically after clicking “Login” thus a mere quality of life improvement.

I want to personally thank ANet for the -forwardrenderer option. This truly made the difference in playing GW2 on my OS of choice. I do hope you folks plan to improve this as well one day. Thank you.

If anyone needs help, I would be happy to provide assistance as best I can.

Cheers,
-Padre

Nice report

I forgot about the forwardrenderer option; last I checked though it removed some shadows and lighting effects that I can’t live without :p The assetsrv command is also interesting.

I used to play GW2 a little bit with AMD hardware; had a 7850 and a R9 380. I didn’t play around with it too much, but this is a quick performance video I did on my R9 with AMDGPU and Gallium Nine: https://youtu.be/pdgKYWh_vos?list=PL9opA5uqRNSCqcYkgEzLAtwTVUFSZygdS

Nowadays I use NVIDIA graphics. Can’t really say if GW2 handles better or not (the hardware I’m using doesn’t really compare to what I had before), but it’s playable and I’m enjoying it :p I use openSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME.

In my sig, I have a link to my notes on getting GW2 installed on Linux. Mostly just some quick copy/paste commands.

That video is great! I’m actually the one who posted on it some time ago! :-)

I’m not sure if the -forwardrenderer argument actually removes those items. I certainly know it doesn’t render terrain shadows and some small particles in Maguuma properly, but it’s hardly noticeable now that I’m used to it.

Those of you that are getting “Display” numerator errors in your wine log… Are you using multiple monitors (eyefinity)? I’m just curious because you have to add these monitors to your xorg configuration file to bypass this error.

OR

Try completely unplugging any additional monitors, reboot. Try and launch the game at this point to determine if the output error is still display enum.

WineHQ – Guild Wars 2 64-bit

The link above will take you to WineHQ, search for Guild Wars 2. You should find my up-to-date test with KDE Neon. I have found several fixes to some items as well. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need help getting the game to work on GNU/Linux.

I would make sure this game run in XP mode in wine.

This game seems to have different rendering paths between win 7/xp etc

Either way, good performance is expected since wine is just native windows dlls and gallium nine is native dx9

I wonder why somebody necro this thread

The thread was not necro’d. I made a quite informative test on WineHQ and wanted the Linux players to be aware who didn’t frequent there while keeping the posts above in-tact. You should probably define what “necro this thread” means because you are mistaken.