I tried playing this on 2 of my computers, it pegs the GPU at 100% on my HD 8790M Quad Core i7 Laptop and Quadro P1000 Core 2 Quad desktop and manages <10fps no matter what resolution I lower things to (tried as low as 720 x 480).

Playing at lower than native resolutions doesn't scale and I end up with black bars to the bottom and right.

Works with Stadia controller, but not well on PS3 controller.

So yeah, it's a shame that they don't have any settings for dialing down the graphics so that it's even playable on lower end hardware.

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So for those on weaker cards, this will probably be an ideal upgrade

I'm gonna say YMMV on this one. I'm on a Radeon HD 8790M which is basically an R7 250 but on a laptop. Settings are 2x MSAA, 2x MSAF, 1080p, all settings on high. Triple-buffer vsync on. My framerate is usually in the mid 50s through gameplay with these settings (sometimes I either turn MSAA off or play on a 900p monitor, to have it hit 60fps more consistently), so needless to say I was super excited about vulkan.

I tried playing a level last week and I had to dial back my settings (disable MSAA 2x) which I noticed was odd. So today I loaded the level I was on for a head to head comparison, because I'm so used to vulkan performing better and didn't want to believe there was a performance regression.

So, with my "usual" settings, I loaded a level and jumped around and then looked at a orange "pulling" vortex beam field thing.

In OpenGL, it's around 45-60fps, and then 50-52fps looking at the vortex beam. It felt generally smooth.
Turned off triple-buffer vsync to stare at the floor: 75 fps. Loading screens were around 140-180fps.

In Vulkan, it's around 38-56fps, and then 40-42fps looking at the vortex beam. It also felt generally more stuttery.
Turned off triple-buffer vsync to stare at the floor: 65 fps. Loading screens were around 220-250fps somehow?

This could either be the radv vulkan driver not being where it should be on older GCN 1.0 cards, and whatever OpenGL translation Portal 2/Mel uses being well optimized and very solid. But the performance for me is where I'd leave it on OpenGL rather than switch the renderer to vulkan. But the beta's fixed a huge bug for me where the "High" shader settings makes the main character's hand a black silhouette without any textures, and it's fixed on both OpenGL and Vulkan. I was playing with "Medium" shader settings up until now as a workaround.

I'll try vulkan DXVK after it's out of beta, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

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Quoting: Joeyboots80Wow. This is crazy. A lot of games I couldn't seem to get to work before now magically work with this steamplay feature. Can't say I'm mad about being to play more of my library without touching windows. :D

I noticed this too, some games that didn't work or wouldn't launch properly while running steam on WINE seem to be working now, somehow, but it could have been the steam client itself not working well on WINE

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Very excited to try this when I get home. Over the years my linux games library grew to over half my games, but this gets back all the rest.

I symphatize with the concerns about developers not targetting linux, but unless we can make targetting linux consistently worth it, we'll just keep waiting. It may never arrive.

I was secretly hoping Steam would let us download games and launch it in Wine/crossover, but proton and the dxvk incorporation really lowers the barrier of entry.

All this being said, I'll generally stick to games with proper linux ports or proper vulkan implementation. May make an exception for NieR Automata though..

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I think this is even greater news on phones. Games are finally playable now on a low-end SnapDragon 400 phone, where on a mid-range SnapDragon 615 two-three years ago couldn't get a good framerate and so resulted in constant audio lag. (SD615 got close when I dropped it to 2x rendering res and heavy frameskip, but the audio was still crackly enough to keep me away).

These aren't vulkan enabled chipsets either, but it's likely due in no small part to the Opengl multithreading.

On the PC Side: (I'm on RX 560 with Mesa 17.2)
Vulkan seems to hold framerate slightly higher with the same settings enabled, OpenGL seems to drop harder when it does.
However, the buggy fullscreen/window resizing is a point of contention, and the audio slowdowns are not noticably better

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It runs very well now. I was getting close to 60fps most of the time, whereas before I would be around the 40-50 range.

I haven't noticed these exact input issues mentioned in the article. mine was more like when I hold down shift or tab, it would think I was depressing that key rapidly. However, jumping at the beginning of the life seemed to clear that up pretty well.

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Wait, isn't CSMT still exclusive to Wine staging?

Also aren't there still games where you need either CSMT or Gallium-nine to get acceptable performance?

Unless CSMT gets merged into Wine actual, then I don't think it's acceptable to end wine-staging. Then again the latest release is pretty good.

Also, I wonder what my distro fedora will do. I think they've been defaulting to wine-staging.

*Update* I just did some research and it looks like Fedora is off wine-staging and wine 3.0 has CSMT and DX11 improvements. I think wine-staging's work here is done. Huge success

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I too have a copy of this game. Got it for $2 from a blowout sale, and did not play it past the first few levels until I switched to linux.

I had the CD version and my complaint is that the 1st and 2nd CDs had to be unmounted via commandline. Dolphin didn't unmount properly and so the next disc wouldn't be detected at the same mount point by the icculus installer.

I'd also liked to have tried the multiplayer. Anyways it's a great game and a testament to the game porting prowess of icculus.

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I'm with @leopard
Time to wishlist some games I really want but aren't available on good ol' linux

- Nier Automata
- Trails in the Sky
- PUBG
- Rise of Tomb Raider (maybe, haven't even finished normal Tomb Raider yet)
- Street Fighter V (wasn't this supposed to be a thing?)

The main big drawback is that every time there's a sale, I'll get emailed about games I don't really want to get until there is a port.

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It takes me 3-4 minutes to load with Shaders and everything set to low. With this, when I load a co-op game I pretty much miss the entire first round. On Insurgency, lowering shader quality helps me load the game faster, not so with Day of Infamy.

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