Creeper World 4 on Linux with Steam Proton

[Gra̶bz]

This thread is for Linux users interested in playing Creeper World 4. At this time, the game is not officially supported on Proton, but I found it to be playable just fine.

If you're a poweruser, you should know that most issues concern support (or lack thereof) for Media Foundation.

I will place the following instructions in order from what works best to what works worst. If you want the best experience, take the first option on the following list. I will also update this post with your experiences, if you post them in this thread :)

Before I get to the guide, here's a list of any miscellaneous problems you might have:

• If you are shown the "...not available on your current platform" error when trying to download the game, you may need to enable Steam Play for unsupported titles. Head over to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play -> Enable Steam Play for all other titles.
  
• If your GPU doesn't support Vulkan, it has been reported that the following Steam launch options work to run the game:

  PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command%

• If you see the game rendering as dark blue (or other forms of artefacting), try turning off ambient occlusion in the in-game settings.
  
• If your issue is not listed here, be sure to also check the game out on ProtonDB https://www.protondb.com/app/848480

One last thing before the guide. These are the issues that concern every version of Proton I have tried. If you've found a version of Proton that rectifies any of these, please let me know in this thread:

• In the recorder, when hitting "Export Video", a filesystem prompt is opened to save the replay file. The game automatically fills in the name of the file to be saved, based on the mission name. On my machine, the file name field is pre-filled with hundreds of whitespace characters. If you save without correcting this, the game will hard freeze with no survivors. Make sure to delete everything in the file name field (CTRL+A and Delete) and write your own filename (for example: something.gif).
  
• In the recorder, MP4 export type does not work. For me, if I save the file, the game shows some exporting process for a brief moment, but the file doesn't appear. GIF exporting works fine, so if you experience similar issues, stick with making GIFs. Update: In the recent versions of CW4, the MP4 option is simply grayed out, indicating it is not supported.

Proton-5.9-GE-6-ST

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/tag/5.9-GE-6-ST
This version has worked near-flawlessly, with the only quirks outlined above. This is primarily because it currently has better support for Media Foundation than the latest official Proton release 5.0-9.

Note: You can find the most updated version of GE's Proton here:
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases
If there is a newer stable version, odds are it will work fine as well, so may as well get the newest version. However, if you experience issues, try the version listed here.

Proton 5.13-2, 5.0-9, 4.11-13

The latest official versions work, but due to limited support for Media Foundation, the following additional features will not work:

• The "How to Play" video will not play. The player will open and show you a blank video player. This feature was only available for a limited time in the early demo version of the game.
  
• When you boot the first mission (09 Leo, 266), the intro will not progress beyond a certain point. You will hear music playing and a black screen that will never go away. You are forced to hit the [Skip] button in bottom right, at which point the level will start, but you will miss a large portion of the intro.

As far as just gameplay is concerned, this version works fine. If you really want to see the intro, try the Proton version above.

Steam Linux Runtime

The game does not contain Linux binaries. At this time the game is not officially supported on Linux.

[Exll]

Korean language pls

[nickbuss72]

I played though the first 5 missions on Pronton 4.11-13 with zero gameplay issues. I had the missing intro/cutscene as described above, and the game froze when I tried to exit and I had to kill the process. Quite a positive experience for a demo on an unsupported platform.

[Fluffy]

Thank you for thinking about us! :-)
I can confirm your findings. Works almost flawlessly on Proton-5.8-GE-2-MF.

[Nagezahn]

The actual game play worked fine for me as well with Proton 5.0-9 except the intro not playing like mentioned above, but I also got a Unity crash when trying to exit the game by using the menu button, not ALT+F4. The game just stops responding. ALT+Tab and back resulted in the CW4 mouse cursor being displayed, but nothing else (not even a black window). There was a process UnityCrashHandler running before I killed CW4.exe.

[Gra̶bz]

Originally posted by Nagezahn:

The actual game play worked fine for me as well with Proton 5.0-9 except the intro not playing like mentioned above, but I also got a Unity crash when trying to exit the game by using the menu button, not ALT+F4. The game just stops responding. ALT+Tab and back resulted in the CW4 mouse cursor being displayed, but nothing else (not even a black window). There was a process UnityCrashHandler running before I killed CW4.exe.

Thanks for the report. I seem unable to reproduce this at the moment (neither with ALT+F4 or with the menu button). However, I've gotten a similar report before, and I definitely believe it - the fault here is that I frequently close my games with ALT+F4, and it must've not crossed my mind to check the menu button.

PS. I must refrain from editing the original post with new feedback for a week or two due to Steam's new automated content check system. This post is "cursed" and goes in limbo for hours after being edited. I don't want the post to disappear for an extended period of time, so I have to wait for a while until they fix it. I will round up all the feedback given though, so you guys can keep posting.

[nickbuss72]

So, I've played through the remaining missions now and didn't have any problems with the game freezing on exit. That puts me on a 1 in 3 freeze on exit rate now.

[Newfolder]

Game runs flawlessly on Arch Linux with Wayland session using Proton 5.0-9!
Though like other comment, intro scene is pitch black (only audio is playing) and 'Exit Game' button does not kill the process (creates UnityCrashHandler).

[Fluffy]

I tried to run this while on the go yesterday on my laptop running Debian 10 Stable (Glorious Eggroll Proton), but there it wouldn't render the text fonts correctly. I would just get white squares.
I'm using a Lenovo T530. (Specs: https://laptopmedia.com/laptop-specs/lenovo-thinkpad-t530-2/)

If you want me to, I can boot it up and see about getting some logs. (Though I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble, since i'm a niche of a niche with my old laptop Debian :-). And it runs fine on my desktop)

[Mozai]

Played it for two hours last night. Won't start today.

- launched with `PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 PROTON_LOG=1 %command%`
I saw that it was much faster/smoother with PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 instead, but
during the intro to the first mission it would lock up and I had to kill -9 it.
- [x] Force the use of a specific Steam Play tool. "Proton 5.0-9"
- Proto log file in $HOME/steam-1293770.log says:

/data/src/common/pipes.cpp (839) : Assertion Failed: fatal stalled cross-thread pipe
/data/src/common/pipes.cpp (839) : Fatal assert failed: /data/src/common/pipes.cpp, line 839.  Application exiting.

EDIT: applied the Eggdrop fork of Proton and it works again, or it works as well as it did last night (no Vulkan for me)

d="$HOME/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d"; mkdir -p $d; cd $d;
curl -L 'https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/download/5.9-GE-7-ST/Proton-5.9-GE-7-ST.tar.gz' |tar xz

Quit Steam, start Steam, Library, right click on "Creeper World 4", "Properties",
[X} Force the use of a specific Steap Play compatibility tool
select "Proton-5.9-GE-7-ST" from the dropdown list.

[Freya]

I had a problem where the game world would render as dark blue. Turning off ambient occlusion in the in-game settings fixed the problem.

[Chalchiutlicue]

There is a newer proton version I used to play this demo.
The thread should get an update @Gra̴bz :)

[Gra̶bz]

Originally posted by Chalchiutlicue:

There is a newer proton version I used to play this demo.
The thread should get an update @Gra̴bz :)

Yep, I need to play more on it in case there are issues, but from a quick test it seems that the same issues from 5.0-9 persist, aside maybe not freezing on exit.

[Chalchiutlicue]

Originally posted by Gra̴bz:

Originally posted by Chalchiutlicue:

There is a newer proton version I used to play this demo.
The thread should get an update @Gra̴bz :)

Yep, I need to play more on it in case there are issues, but from a quick test it seems that the same issues from 5.0-9 persist, aside maybe not freezing on exit.

My main issue is the performance.
I can only play with the performance mode to achieve ~45fps at the beginning which go down in the later gameplay to 16fps.
Using the visual mode turns the game into 7fps stuttering from beginning.
The "beautify terrain" option reduces my fps at most.
I better play crysis 1, 2 & 3 again on my laptop. xD

[Gra̶bz]

Originally posted by Chalchiutlicue:

My main issue is the performance.
I can only play with the performance mode to achieve ~45fps at the beginning which go down in the later gameplay to 16fps.
Using the visual mode turns the game into 7fps stuttering from beginning.
The "beautify terrain" option reduces my fps at most.
I better play crysis 1, 2 & 3 again on my laptop. xD

See if the game is using integrated GPU instead of dedicated GPU for some reason. This game is quite well optimized and in order to run it so poorly you must have an archaic laptop with integrated GPU, and there's no way you're running crysis on that.

[Chalchiutlicue]

Originally posted by Gra̴bz:

Originally posted by Chalchiutlicue:

My main issue is the performance.
I can only play with the performance mode to achieve ~45fps at the beginning which go down in the later gameplay to 16fps.
Using the visual mode turns the game into 7fps stuttering from beginning.
The "beautify terrain" option reduces my fps at most.
I better play crysis 1, 2 & 3 again on my laptop. xD

See if the game is using integrated GPU instead of dedicated GPU for some reason. This game is quite well optimized and in order to run it so poorly you must have an archaic laptop with integrated GPU, and there's no way you're running crysis on that.

I used primusrun and also tried "PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1"
I also only had a difference between iGPU and GPU of just about 10 fps in the upper limit.

But it was okay for me to play every of the 9 worlds of the demo in the performance graphics mode.

And as I said I can run crysis 1, 2 & 3 on my laptop.
Under windows on very high settings at 1368x768 with 30fps limit it was smooth like hell without any lags.
My laptop has a i7-6700HQ with a gtx 940mx discrete card and 32GB ddr4 ram.

This game of course should need less hardware power or it is bad optimized.
Of course I don't know how much proton interferes and I hope for a native linux port.