Linux RPG list

[rusty_shackleford]

A choice of OS in your every day use doesn't actually matter anymore when all you need is a browser.

Enjoy your Microsoft Game Pass©®™

 

[taxalot]

A choice of OS in your every day use doesn't actually matter anymore when all you need is a browser.

Enjoy your Microsoft Game Pass©®™

Fuck that. I'm using Playstation Now. That doesn't work on Linux.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

what about this DXVK thing I've heard about? People gush about that.

I might give a linux distro a try as i just recently installed a new mechanical HDD someone gave me that currently has nothing on it except torrent junk i've downloaded that i can delete without worry, so i've actually been thinking about doing this already.

if anyone can link me to some step-by-step guides that'd be awesome as well, specifically ones for using WINE/DXVK.

DXVK is a Direct3D 10/11 to Vulkan translation layer. It takes API calls for D3D10/11 and turns them to Vulkan API calls. The idea is that since Vulkan is very close to the metal compared to OpenGL, it can be much faster (and potentially with less compatibility issues). It is a great idea, and you can use DXVK even on Windows, many people don't realize that.

Combined with WINE, it allows for almost-native-speed Direct3D 10/11 gaming. It is a new project but already supports almost every aspect of Direct3D 11 and is fast enough and compatible enough.

As for guides, i may post a few later but you can also google, there are plenty of guides out there, easy to find. Keep in mind that you can also use Lutris, and it has automated install scripts for almost everything. For Steam games and GOG native games you don't need any guides, one click install and play...

Vulkan being "closer to the metal than opengl" is a bit of a myth. You can do everything Vulkan can do in OpenGL(e.g., refer to Nvidia's AZDO presentation), it's just more difficult because it relies upon vendor extensions. Not to mention that the OGL API itself is a mess from years of cruft and a refusal to deprecate anything. Pretty much everything in OGL has 2-3+ ways to do it, and only one of them is the correct "modern" way that's performant on modern hardware.

OGL is a mess because it kept changing to suit the hardware of the time, it will happen to Vulkan too eventually.

 

[TemplarGR]

What is it that gets your juices going about it?

I've seen you defend it from a technical/mathmatical POV many a time, but can't ever recall you describing what you love about it.

I'm genuinely curious to know what floats your boat with it? When you think about playing it what stirs you?

Ok, i won't make a review of the game since that is besides the point, you are asking what i personally like about it. Ok. Here it goes:

I love making builds for Skyrim. Obviously, you can make builds in many RPGs, but Skyrim has the additional benefit of the build feeling more "personal", since it is a first person game. I mean, i can make builds in Pathfinder Kingmaker or Pillars of Eternity too, but those are party based and isometric. I mean, it is strategic, but it is not "direct control". I don't *feel* like i am directly playing the character, you know what i mean?

For example, i decide i want to play a vampire necromancer who does not use physical weapons or destruction magic because he prefers having his skeletal minions + zombies do the work for him, plus i want some illusion magic and some stealth. So i level up/perk up in Illusion, a part of Conjuration, some enchantment, some smithing, and stealth. I also join the Vampire faction. I refuse to use elemental summons, since i am a necromancer. I only use skeletal/spectral summons and raise dead spells. In other RPGs, the class would be set in stone before i picked it, and would be an isometric affair in party. But in Skyrim, i get to make it myself exactly like i want it, and i get to play it exactly like i want it, i even create a bio for that character in my mind. And then i DIRECTLY CONTROL MY AVATAR's actions!

You see, in most crpgs, you are controlling them like when you play a strategy game. This is not *bad*, i like games like that too. But i love to play a more action-oriented game where i literally just roleplay an avatar that i made to my liking, exactly like i wanted it.

Skyrim is a big sandbox. Yes it is easy. Of course you can increase the difficulty but that just increases the hitsponge... Yes you can also break it very easily with Smithing Enchanting and Alchemy cheese. But the point of Skyrim is not to win it. There is nothing to "win" in Skyrim. And the story is just "there". It is not a story driven game.

The point of Skyrim is to just experience your personally-made-avatar and HAVE FUN!

I must have wasted around 700-800 hours of my life in Skyrim. Seriously. Perhaps more. It is one of my most played games. I am still playing it and will keep playing it for the foreseeable future. I have made more than 100 characters in it. You know how many times i have finished the main quest? Just once. Just once, i am serious. Actually, i only reached the old blade stronghold (don't remember the name) perhaps 2 or 3 times. I just didn't care.

I had extreme fun just taking DnD builds, and making their equivalent in Skyrim... I tried to make Paladins, Rangers, Druids, Clerics, Rogues, etc. I loved just experimenting to come up with very fun builds that could be completed by level 30-40. I picked and matched perk combinations, unique items, items i made myself, to make the best possible archetypes. From Khajit-pugilist-gladiators to DwarvenArmored-Crossbowmen to Merchant-with-no-combat-skill-whatsoever. Why? Because it was optimal?

No. Because it was fun. Because why the fuck not?

It is an RPG, you aren't supposed to min-max, you don't min-max in real life. People just are. I made people. And controlled their actions through mouse and keyboard. In first person view.

Do you understand now? People like me who love Skyrim, don't love it because it has the best writing or the best autistic spreadsheet combat system. Or because it is huuuuuuurd cooooooore combaaaaat. No, we just enjoy LARPING.

 

[Falksi]

What is it that gets your juices going about it?

I've seen you defend it from a technical/mathmatical POV many a time, but can't ever recall you describing what you love about it.

I'm genuinely curious to know what floats your boat with it? When you think about playing it what stirs you?

Ok, i won't make a review of the game since that is besides the point, you are asking what i personally like about it. Ok. Here it goes:

I love making builds for Skyrim. Obviously, you can make builds in many RPGs, but Skyrim has the additional benefit of the build feeling more "personal", since it is a first person game. I mean, i can make builds in Pathfinder Kingmaker or Pillars of Eternity too, but those are party based and isometric. I mean, it is strategic, but it is not "direct control". I don't *feel* like i am directly playing the character, you know what i mean?

For example, i decide i want to play a vampire necromancer who does not use physical weapons or destruction magic because he prefers having his skeletal minions + zombies do the work for him, plus i want some illusion magic and some stealth. So i level up/perk up in Illusion, a part of Conjuration, some enchantment, some smithing, and stealth. I also join the Vampire faction. I refuse to use elemental summons, since i am a necromancer. I only use skeletal/spectral summons and raise dead spells. In other RPGs, the class would be set in stone before i picked it, and would be an isometric affair in party. But in Skyrim, i get to make it myself exactly like i want it, and i get to play it exactly like i want it, i even create a bio for that character in my mind. And then i DIRECTLY CONTROL MY AVATAR's actions!

You see, in most crpgs, you are controlling them like when you play a strategy game. This is not *bad*, i like games like that too. But i love to play a more action-oriented game where i literally just roleplay an avatar that i made to my liking, exactly like i wanted it.

Skyrim is a big sandbox. Yes it is easy. Of course you can increase the difficulty but that just increases the hitsponge... Yes you can also break it very easily with Smithing Enchanting and Alchemy cheese. But the point of Skyrim is not to win it. There is nothing to "win" in Skyrim. And the story is just "there". It is not a story driven game.

The point of Skyrim is to just experience your personally-made-avatar and HAVE FUN!

I must have wasted around 700-800 hours of my life in Skyrim. Seriously. Perhaps more. It is one of my most played games. I am still playing it and will keep playing it for the foreseeable future. I have made more than 100 characters in it. You know how many times i have finished the main quest? Just once. Just once, i am serious. Actually, i only reached the old blade stronghold (don't remember the name) perhaps 2 or 3 times. I just didn't care.

I had extreme fun just taking DnD builds, and making their equivalent in Skyrim... I tried to make Paladins, Rangers, Druids, Clerics, Rogues, etc. I loved just experimenting to come up with very fun builds that could be completed by level 30-40. I picked and matched perk combinations, unique items, items i made myself, to make the best possible archetypes. From Khajit-pugilist-gladiators to DwarvenArmored-Crossbowmen to Merchant-with-no-combat-skill-whatsoever. Why? Because it was optimal?

No. Because it was fun. Because why the fuck not?

It is an RPG, you aren't supposed to min-max, you don't min-max in real life. People just are. I made people. And controlled their actions through mouse and keyboard. In first person view.

Do you understand now? People like me who love Skyrim, don't love it because it has the best writing or the best autistic spreadsheet combat system. Or because it is huuuuuuurd cooooooore combaaaaat. No, we just enjoy LARPING.

Fair fucks to you chap. It's not my cup of cha, but it is nice to read what someone who does enjoy it gets out of it.

I guess I'm more about the quest than the character, but can see why folk who just enjoy creating characters thrive on it.

 

[Jazz_]

Ehhh.... even as a linux evangelist myself, this isn't entirely true.
I mean, yeah, there are games like that. But for many, it is required that you setup your Wine prefix (which is a fancy word for Wine installation, you can have multiple ones with different configurations) in a correct way, install the correct stuff via winetricks, get DXVK to run for some, etc. It really isn't just plug'n'play for most games. If you've done it a few times, it becomes easy, yeah, but what doesn't?

I dream of a linux distribution that just comes with Wine from the get-go, has requirements for applications on a list and installs them automatically for whatever game you are installing/starting.
So, like Steam Play, but on a system level. Maybe Steam OS will be that, at some point. Though to be honest I'd prefer an alternative without ties to big companies.

In my experience all the games I have installed worked right out of the box with the standard Wine configuration and didn't require any tinkering on my part whatsoever except Diablo 1, that game didn't work for me on Wine and I couldn't be arsed to investigate the reasons; plus I had to download and run a script in Play on Linux to download some additional crap to utilize the Doom Editor, and that's it.
I guess with new games there's a higher chance that you need to do some tinkering with Wine? I have Linux on an old-ish laptop so I mostly installed relatively old games there.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Seems strange to me. Fallout New Vegas is known to work out of the box, it is considered Platinum on WINE. I have it installed on my system right now, fully modded, and i run it with gallium nine (i have an AMD gpu) and it runs perfectly. The only issue that is also a known issue is that it sometimes hangs up when you quit to desktop, so i typically alt+tab and close it from the lutris menu

No idea why, I just could not get it to run. That was a couple of years ago though, maybe it would be different now. By the way, I'm one of those people that started with Ubuntu (later Mint) and never bothered to change to anything else. I guess I'm very conservative when it comes to how my system works & looks (or just too lazy to change it). Hell, I use Mate and a Compiz fork for that classic Gnome 2 feel.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Seems strange to me. Fallout New Vegas is known to work out of the box, it is considered Platinum on WINE. I have it installed on my system right now, fully modded, and i run it with gallium nine (i have an AMD gpu) and it runs perfectly. The only issue that is also a known issue is that it sometimes hangs up when you quit to desktop, so i typically alt+tab and close it from the lutris menu

No idea why, I just could not get it to run. That was a couple of years ago though, maybe it would be different now. By the way, I'm one of those people that started with Ubuntu (later Mint) and never bothered to change to anything else. I guess I'm very conservative when it comes to how my system works & looks (or just too lazy to change it). Hell, I use Mate and a Compiz fork for that classic Gnome 2 feel.

Wine changes rapidly, a few years ago is ancient history for it.

 

[TemplarGR]

Nice news, Proton was just released with a version of FAudio... This means Skyrim Special edition should work properly and possibly Fallout 4, among other games... For those who don't know, WINE's implementation of xaudio2 was broken and this made voices and music to not work in newer Bethesda games, and it also broke scripting for some reason. They are using an opensource re-implementation that was developed for Linux ports of games that used xaudio2 on Windows.

More news about it here:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/artic...udio-also-a-steam-play-whitelist-update.13143

In my experience all the games I have installed worked right out of the box with the standard Wine configuration and didn't require any tinkering on my part whatsoever except Diablo 1, that game didn't work for me on Wine and I couldn't be arsed to investigate the reasons; plus I had to download and run a script in Play on Linux to download some additional crap to utilize the Doom Editor, and that's it.
I guess with new games there's a higher chance that you need to do some tinkering with Wine? I have Linux on an old-ish laptop so I mostly installed relatively old games there.

Yes, typically newer games have a higher chance of not working or needing tweaks to work with WINE. There are multiple reasons for this. From newer APIs not being implemented yet/implemented incorrectly, to stuff like Denuvo (that currently prevents games from running under WINE). Still, WINE improves by leaps and bounds with each year so just because a game does not work out of the box now, does not mean it won't work in 1 or 2 years from now.

No idea why, I just could not get it to run. That was a couple of years ago though, maybe it would be different now. By the way, I'm one of those people that started with Ubuntu (later Mint) and never bothered to change to anything else. I guess I'm very conservative when it comes to how my system works & looks (or just too lazy to change it). Hell, I use Mate and a Compiz fork for that classic Gnome 2 feel.

As rusty_shackleford said, WINE is improving at a great pace, and many games work now that didn't work a few years ago.

As for look and feel, that is what is good about Linux, do what you like about it. It is perfectly configurable. You can use stuff other people made or hell even make your own stuff. And i am not talking just themes, styles and widgets here. You can even develop your own window manager and desktop environment if you have the time and are interested.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Has anyone tried Direct3D rendering for Deus Ex on Linux? With D3DDrv.dll it falls back to software rendering mode, the d3d10 renderer does not work either - getting some "Init: Initializing Direct3D failed" error. I'm using Deus Exe, wine version is 4.0rc2.

To clarify, Direct3D rendering works fine when using the original exe (goty edition for steam), though with it the game seems to start occasionally crashing/not responding when you alt-tab and switch back to the game window again.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Interesting!
This is how it looks for me (Ubuntu 18.04):

Yes, it looks terrible.

You really can't see how much blurrier your fonts are than mine?

lol, linuxfags, battling it out in font readability, and nobody winning.

 

[garren]

what about this DXVK thing I've heard about? People gush about that.

I might give a linux distro a try as i just recently installed a new mechanical HDD someone gave me that currently has nothing on it except torrent junk i've downloaded that i can delete without worry, so i've actually been thinking about doing this already.

if anyone can link me to some step-by-step guides that'd be awesome as well, specifically ones for using WINE/DXVK.

DXVK is truly a great thing and one of the main reasons WINE-compatibility has grown so much recently.

About installation:
https://www.linuxtechi.com/ubuntu-18-04-lts-desktop-installation-guide-screenshots/
Most of it is that partition stuff I wrote about earlier, but it is well described in that guide.

About using Wine/DXVK: That is a bit more complicated, at least if you do not want to use tools like Lutris.
If you want to use Lutris, here's a guide: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki/How-to:-DXVK

Without Lutris, you'll have to manually configure Wine using winetricks, which is quite a bother. Though it does get a bit easier with a GUI for that, such as q4wine.

I'd definitely recommend using Lutris or Proton from steam
personally I use a set of bash scripts I wrote to manage my wine prefixes

Yeah I personally think that Lutris and Steam with Proton is the best way to start trying gaming on linux for non linux games now if you're new, I think it's the most foolproof way because the scripts do all the work for you.

useful site: https://www.protondb.com/

 

[thesheeep]

Interesting!
This is how it looks for me (Ubuntu 18.04):

Yes, it looks terrible.

You know what's funny?
On the same machine I took that screenshot with, but on Windows 10, that image I posted looks blurry as hell:
https://i.imgur.com/ctHMbbW.png
(and in that screenshot, even the normal font looks blurry, which it just doesn't on the actual display).
So for some reason the image display on Windows 10 is fucked and/or so at least with Chrome.

If THAT is what everyone sees on Windows, no wonder you guys think linux fonts are blurry
Seriously, they aren't. Otherwise I'd have lots of trouble switching between Windows and linux all the time.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Here's how it looks on my machine: https://i.imgur.com/GAdEek7.png

By the way I hate how on smart phones blurry/pixelated/malformed fonts aren't a problem since many of them have small high-resolution 300+ ppi screens (android also uses freetype2 if I remember correctly), yet on pc fonts look far worse and you can't get a monitor with pixel density this high.

 

[Nano]

Has anyone tried Direct3D rendering for Deus Ex on Linux? With D3DDrv.dll it falls back to software rendering mode, the d3d10 renderer does not work either - getting some "Init: Initializing Direct3D failed" error. I'm using Deus Exe, wine version is 4.0rc2.

To clarify, Direct3D rendering works fine when using the original exe (goty edition for steam), though with it the game seems to start occasionally crashing/not responding when you alt-tab and switch back to the game window again.

There's an OpenGL renderer for Deus Ex, no?

 

[redactir]

Not to toot my own redacted but Prosperius Redaxum is available for Linux. If the developer (me) wanted to I could turn it into an actually entertaining consuming rpg.
But I have more original ideas for it and rather not crowd it out just to appease small minded individuals.

I guess what Im' saying is play my game, it has a linux build because you can pretend what might be easily from it.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

What if you have linux installed on your vitual partition to play with on the side while you do other things, as well as several partitions in your hard drive, with a main windows o/s, and other linux o/s's for when you feel like spelunking and playing around with the command line interface?
I feel as if my situation is not accurately represented in this list of options.

 

[nikolokolus]

I've been running multiple distros in virtual machines for years just to keep up with the various spins, but I work from home 3 days a week and theres just no way to run ArcGIS or the corporate software i need through VPN on Linux.

Nice to see things have gotten better since the days of Loki games, or when you had to pay for that POS WineX just to get Warcraft 3 to run at 15 fps.

 

[Mexi]

I use Linux for a living. I think the supercomputer I've worked on uses a kernel-based Linux OS. Windows is superior. Apple is easily the worst. I don't know why anyone would want to use Linux for anything other than work. Sounds more like some faggot sperglord that thinks it means he's smart.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

I've been running multiple distros in virtual machines for years just to keep up with the various spins, but I work from home 3 days a week and theres just no way to run ArcGIS or the corporate software i need through VPN on Linux.

Nice to see things have gotten better since the days of Loki games, or when you had to pay for that POS WineX just to get Warcraft 3 to run at 15 fps.

things are better, but nowhere near enough to be viable to actually transfer over to linux permanently and play most games. Wine is still incredibly unstable or non-functioning with most games, and it's mostly indie games that have linux support, unfortunately. If only Steams console plan worked out, linux could have seen a true birth of linux gaming to take the pc market in the future.

 

[TemplarGR]

I use Linux for a living. I think the supercomputer I've worked on uses a kernel-based Linux OS. Windows is superior. Apple is easily the worst. I don't know why anyone would want to use Linux for anything other than work. Sounds more like some faggot sperglord that thinks it means he's smart.

What a shitty opinion to have. Especially in 2019...

By the way, i use Linux for a living as well. And while 10 years ago i would probably say the same thing as you, today? Nope. There is nothing i miss from a Windows OS on my home pc. In fact, there are several benefits to using Linux. Linux simplifies updating your apps/libaries/drivers for example, and this is huge for me, because i am OCD in these things and i hate having outdated software on my machine. Using Archlinux has been a bliss for me. Just 1 small command and i can have everything updated. No need to look for updates for every single utility i use, no need to look for driver updates...

Also, the fact that my machine is by far more resilient to malware is also a huge plus, and the fact that no one spies on my machine...

 

[ColonelTeacup]

I use Linux for a living. I think the supercomputer I've worked on uses a kernel-based Linux OS. Windows is superior. Apple is easily the worst. I don't know why anyone would want to use Linux for anything other than work. Sounds more like some faggot sperglord that thinks it means he's smart.

What a shitty opinion to have. Especially in 2019...

By the way, i use Linux for a living as well. And while 10 years ago i would probably say the same thing as you, today? Nope. There is nothing i miss from a Windows OS on my home pc. In fact, there are several benefits to using Linux. Linux simplifies updating your apps/libaries/drivers for example, and this is huge for me, because i am OCD in these things and i hate having outdated software on my machine. Using Archlinux has been a bliss for me. Just 1 small command and i can have everything updated. No need to look for updates for every single utility i use, no need to look for driver updates...

Also, the fact that my machine is by far more resilient to malware is also a huge plus, and the fact that no one spies on my machine...

You sound as if you use Ubuntu.

 

[TemplarGR]

things are better, but nowhere near enough to be viable to actually transfer over to linux permanently and play most games. Wine is still incredibly unstable or non-functioning with most games, and it's mostly indie games that have linux support, unfortunately. If only Steams console plan worked out, linux could have seen a true birth of linux gaming to take the pc market in the future.

Going Linux permanently can be viable, depending on what games you play. If you can't live without the latest AAA denuvo multiplayer game, then yes, Linux is unviable. But if you can manage without having access to every single game in existence, Linux is definitely viable to use.

 

[TemplarGR]

You sound as if you use Ubuntu.

Interesting. Haven't used Ubuntu in a decade. But i am curious, how did you reach that conclusion?

 

[ColonelTeacup]

things are better, but nowhere near enough to be viable to actually transfer over to linux permanently and play most games. Wine is still incredibly unstable or non-functioning with most games, and it's mostly indie games that have linux support, unfortunately. If only Steams console plan worked out, linux could have seen a true birth of linux gaming to take the pc market in the future.

Going Linux permanently can be viable, depending on what games you play. If you can't live without the latest AAA denuvo multiplayer game, then yes, Linux is unviable. But if you can manage without having access to every single game in existence, Linux is definitely viable to use.

As enjoyable as it is to play around with a terminal, and find new apps to play with, i'd rather keep linux on the side and main windows, if only for accessibility and stabilities sake. I see no reason to downgrade my options when there are viable alternatives to use both linux and windows at the same time, easily.

You sound as if you use Ubuntu.

Interesting. Haven't used Ubuntu in a decade. But i am curious, how did you reach that conclusion?

Mostly just poking fun, on account of the "always updated and safe from spying and viruses" bit you said.