I play WoW on a private server via Steam and Proton. It’s worked perfectly so far. I haven’t played for about two weeks, and suddenly WoW isn’t working via Steam anymore. It won’t even start. On some compatibility modes, particularly older ones, the game does at least launch, but all i get is a black screen. Not even the intro sequence starts.

Here’s what I’ve already tried:

  • Downloaded WoW again and set it up on Steam
  • Tried all the compatibility modes available on Steam
  • Tried to get WoW to run via Lutris/Wine – again, using all available compatibility modes
  • Updated Kubuntu to the latest version
  • Tested different graphics drivers

Unfortunately, none of this works. What also puzzles me is that some games (Diablo 3, Warcraft 3) no longer work properly either; with these, I either get stuck at a frozen start screen or (in the case of Warcraft 3) they only run at around 20 FPS.

Other games, such as CS2, on the other hand, work absolutely fine, with high graphics settings and ~250 FPS.

It almost seems as though the other games are somehow being run via the onboard graphics card. That would at least be my attempt to explain why significantly older games like Warcraft 3 run at only 20 FPS, whilst modern games like CS2 have significantly better performance.

I also have a dual-boot system, so I’ve got Windows installed as well. And on Windows, all these games run smoothly with high FPS. I’d therefore tend to rule out a hardware issue.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    11·
    9 hours ago

    Unfortunately, none of this works. What also puzzles me is that some games (Diablo 3, Warcraft 3) no longer work properly either; with these, I either get stuck at a frozen start screen or (in the case of Warcraft 3) they only run at around 20 FPS.

    Other games, such as CS2, on the other hand, work absolutely fine, with high graphics settings and ~250 FPS.

    It almost seems as though the other games are somehow being run via the onboard graphics card. That would at least be my attempt to explain why significantly older games like Warcraft 3 run at only 20 FPS, whilst modern games like CS2 have significantly better performance.

    Run the game under mangohud and it’ll show you the renderer being used with an onscreen overlay.

    Install mangohud, which your distro probably packages (on my Debian trixie system, sudo apt install mangohud:i386 mangohud:amd64 to get both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions), then set the game launch properties in Steam to MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud %command%.

    Could be that you’re missing systemwide 3D libraries/drivers for 32 bit binaries and Warcraft 3, which is an elderly game, is a 32-bit binary and it’s falling back to software rendering — I’ve seen that before. If the renderer mangohud lists is something like “llvmpipe”, it’s doing software rendering.

    EDIT: For my Debian trixie system, looks like the 32-bit package for my AMD GPU is “amdgpu-lib32”. May differ based on your distro.

    EDIT2: Missed that you’re using Kubuntu. That’s Ubuntu-based, which is Debian-family, so the package name may be the same if you’re using an AMD GPU.

    EDIT3: if you want a simple test that can examine both the 32-bit and 64-bit paths for both OpenGL and Vulkan, install mesa-utils-bin:i386 and mesa-utils-bin:amd64. That contains glxgears (OpenGL) and vkgears (Vulkan) with both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries (vkgears.i386-linux-gnu, etc). WINE/Proton can use either OpenGL or Vulkan backends, depending upon the version and ocnfiguration. These are simple programs that just display spinning gears, used to check whether 3D is working. You can run them under mangohud as above ($ MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud vkgears.x86_64-linux-gnu) without futzing with Steam or guessing whether a game’s binary us 32-bit or 64-bit. If mangohud says that any of them are rendering with llvmpipe, you’re falling back to software rendering.

    EDIT4: Here’s an example on my system showing hardware rendering:

    https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/33e06f12-d2c5-464a-ad69-319c5c14a822.png

    And (forced) software rendering, with a red circle around the “llvmpipe” text that I’m talking about:

    https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/170cb0c0-ed3d-4535-9aa8-37bba61da412.png