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Divinity: Original Sin may soon work with Mesa drivers

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Divinity: Original Sin [Official Site] is one game that the stable open source Mesa drivers currently cannot run without hacks, but it looks like the Mesa team has been testing it.

Just today a commit was sent in to Mesa which mentioned "drirc: Allow extension midshader for Divinity: Original Sin (EE)". It's interesting to see game-specific changes like this, as some games will sadly need them.

You can see the commit here, which has already landed in Mesa-git. You can see the actual bug report about it here.

Hopefully with this patch landed, it means more people can enjoy another highly rated Linux-native game on open source drivers. It might still need other hacks to run, as previously it needed more than one change.

While this is only changing a config file to have this game-specific change in by default, it's still nice that users don't have to look up what to do to get it working.

I cannot test it personally, as I don't have an AMD card to test with. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Al3s Jan 8, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlI also recommend setting this for the game, otherwise it will clutter your $HOME:

HOME=${HOME}/.local/share

Where should I set this?


Last edited by Al3s on 8 January 2017 at 3:19 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Jan 8, 2017
Quoting: crt0mega
Quoting: liamdaweThe end result is the same, users don't have to fuss around and search around for solutions.
I agree. Let's hope Larian makes the next step which renders this hack unnecessary.

Edit: About unnecessary things – was it really necessary to drag this discussion to Twitter and even change my message by cherry-picking and ignoring the term "IMHO"? :|
I often poke fun at people on Twitter, and it wasn't a direct quote just inspired by stuff here. The point again remains, people saying how it's not a big deal. Well to people who have no idea about this, it will be.
Maelrane Jan 8, 2017
I just hope Linux drivers (*) will never get bloated with some optimal render paths for certain games, because that's just putting the cart before the horse.

Either game devs learn to fucking programming, or there fucking games should never be published/released.

Same nonsense as with browser-crap. Just because every idiot thinks he knows how to write html (who actually doesn't) suddenly browsers had to implement tens of thousands workarounds. Well "had to", one idiot started with that shit and then everyone had to.

It's idiotic. Learn the goddamn api. Not talking about some settings obviously. They are specific and I agree that stuff can go in there. But generally speaking, I don't want huge drivers just because of incompetent devs.

(*) I mean the mesa/open source ones, obviously. I don't care for any shit nvidia or amd put in their proprietary nonsense.
Shmerl Jan 8, 2017
I've heard driconf is a dead project anyway.
Shmerl Jan 8, 2017
Quoting: Al3s
Quoting: ShmerlI also recommend setting this for the game, otherwise it will clutter your $HOME:

HOME=${HOME}/.local/share

Where should I set this?

In the same script that you set workaround hacks. I.e. in runner.sh that comes with the game.
Shugyousha Jan 8, 2017
The git version of mesa I am running on my machine (the GPU is a RX480) includes this patch already. I tried running that game from Steam directly (without the hacks that work) and while it opened a window and drew the custom cursor (which it didn't do before that patch) it also froze my whole machine.

The patch only gets the game half-way there and I assume they will have to add another workaround before the game runs without issues.


Last edited by Shugyousha on 8 January 2017 at 6:43 pm UTC
Shmerl Jan 8, 2017
Quoting: ShugyoushaThe patch only gets the game half-way there and I assume they will have to add another workaround before the game runs without issues.

They already stated, that it's a mistake in the game to read some hardcoded vendor string for AMD. Mesa isn't going to "fix" it for them. May be instead of making shims they'll provide some way to set that through environment variables. At least that won't require compilation.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 January 2017 at 6:52 pm UTC
1xok Jan 8, 2017
I hope in a year all games will run with mesa. Realistic? You would have much more choice with the graphics cards. I think AMD is bringing some interesting cards to the market this year.


Last edited by 1xok on 8 January 2017 at 10:46 pm UTC
Al3s Jan 9, 2017
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: Al3s
Quoting: ShmerlI also recommend setting this for the game, otherwise it will clutter your $HOME:

HOME=${HOME}/.local/share

Where should I set this?

In the same script that you set workaround hacks. I.e. in runner.sh that comes with the game.

Thanks. I'll give it a try tomorrow.
MayeulC Jan 9, 2017
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: Al3s
Quoting: ShmerlI also recommend setting this for the game, otherwise it will clutter your $HOME:

HOME=${HOME}/.local/share

Where should I set this?

In the same script that you set workaround hacks. I.e. in runner.sh that comes with the game.

Or in the steam launch options:

HOME=${HOME}/.local/share %command%

This is actually a pretty good idea, and I am considering changing this variable before launching Steam, considering the number of games that behave correctly.
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