[Grom_PE]

I've gone over to Linux after using Windows for 25 years.

As someone who enjoys older games, I am pleasantly surprised that Wine (with dxvk and cnc-ddraw) lets me run more games in a better way than I was able to on Windows.

I can run some 16-bit games on a 64-bit OS!

Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work.

I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in:

    gamescope -S integer -F nearest --borderless wine game.exe

Also there is a potential to use a different Wine configuration (prefix) for every game specifically. So far I haven't had to resort to this.

I noticed some Unity games waste disk space with gigabytes of zeroes, Linux lets me run them from inside a compressed SquashFS image, this even makes the game load faster:

    mkdir ./game
    squashfuse ./game.squashfs ./game
    pushd ./game
    wine game.exe
    popd
    sleep 1
    umount ./game
    rmdir ./game

I encountered a game that crashes due to multiprocessor system, the fix is simple, restricting it to one CPU:

    taskset --cpu-list 1 wine game.exe

[raron]

> Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work.

Maybe Wine could be ported to Windows :-)

[usrusr]

There will be a day when Microsoft ships a "Windows" that cuts all legacy compatibility except for an included distribution of Wine.

[bigyabai]

It was/is unironically a "solution" to some games (eg. Elden Ring) with unfixable stuttering on Windows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAooLiCy7rE

[mkl]

You can already run it in WSL2, apparently.

[caminanteblanco]

It already is in some form! This is what I used to play Sid Meier's Civnet with my brothers: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

[unparagoned]

Just run it under wsl

[throwaway2046]

>I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in

Also possible using dxwrapper (for DirectX 7-9 games):

https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper

Similarly to dxvk, you drop a few DLLs into the game directory then edit one config file. No need to use a dedicated program.

[riizade]

Can you elaborate on Unity wasting disk space on gigabytes of zeroes?

How did you discover that? Is it intentional on Unity's part? Percentage-wise, are we talking 2% of a 100GB game, or 50% of a 4GB game?

I can't find anything about it online.

[Grom_PE]

I suppose that is an issue how a specific game was made, not inherent to Unity.

I like to look inside game files and a .zip archive of 1GB unpacking to ~10GB game made me suspicious.

[jayd16]

Reminds me of the mention of "contiguous zeroes" that used to be in the Apple App Store docs.[1] Which seemed like just a backhanded way to say "we encrypt and then compress so don't expect easy compression."

I suppose this might be asset padding or perhaps these are raw textures with full alpha sections? Still, it seems pretty strange. What game, what asset?

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42478186/app-size-on-app...

[apatheticonion]

Same! Fallout New Vegas runs phenomenally on Linux but struggles on Windows. Same with Call of Duty 2 and even some newer titles like Borderlands 2.

[jeffbee]

Neat. I am in the habit of using the kernel squashfs with privileges. TIL about squashfuse.

[Dwedit]

OTVDM (based on Wine) allows you to run 16-bit programs on 64-bit Windows, so it's not just a Linux thing.