Hi everyone, I just feel like sharing how the game runs on my GNU/Linux box.

tl;dr Status at the moment (the day of launch): A sound issue and serious graphic artifacts: Unplayable.

My system specs:
- CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700
- Mem: 32GiB
- GPU: nVidia GTX 1080 Ti
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 9.1 (stretch)
- Graphics driver: Official nVidia installed from tarball, version 384.59
- Sound backend: ALSA
- playonlinux 4.2.10 (distro packed)

Wine versions:
I tried wine versions 2.13 and 2.12-staging, both amd64 version (the game won't run under ia32). The outcome was the same.

Installation:
I created new, fresh virtual drive with given wine version through playonlinux. I let Windows 7 be the system version, and in case of staging wine enabled EAX and CSMT.
Then I ran the installer.

Installer didn't show any progress bar while installing and grinded something heavily in one thread for approximately 15 minutes (writing to disk in short bursts with ~5s pauses). Then it ran msvc++ runtime installers (2008, 2010, 2013 and maybe 2015). Then it said it's done.

I chose to exit (not to launch) and added shortcut to the HellbladeGame-Win64-Shipping.exe file to my playonlinux list.

Running:
The game starts as follows:
1) Initial movies (logos) plays flawlessly.
2) As soon as the game engine sound kicks in, the sound issue becomes apparent (I will elaborate on that one later)
3) Menu works flawlessly
4) In graphics settings, everything was set very high, so I let it that way (after realizing it can't be turned higher :-) )
5) New game starts (loads and starts to display)
6) During initial cutscene, very heavy graphical artifacts occurs which renders the game unplayable. I did not go beyond the cutscene, since I really want to enjoy the game someday.

Graphical issues:
These are really just artifacts. Things which should not be there. Later part of the initial cutscene, I have just sun all over the screen, seeing effectively nothing.
It is interesting, how much custom graphics code there have to be. No Man's Sky runs in the wine just out of the box without such trouble (I mention it because it is also avilable for both PC and PS4 -> uses OpenGL).

The sound issue:
Overall, sound sounds good, except for one thing: the sound buffer is not being filled fast enough (or whole). And, well, the game engine does not seem to reflect sampling rate on of ALSA output device.
This can be either a glitch of the game, or the wine-alsa driver. (Most other windows games run just fine with this audio setup.)

These conclusions are based on testing, where I found out:
- Doubling ALSA output device sampling rate moved the sound an octave higher
- Doubling ALSA output device sampling rate doubled the number of dropouts
- Looking at the output signal in audacity, it quite regularly dropped out (contained zeroes)


In case you have a recipe to make things work better, go on and share it. In other cases please let this thread be informative and on topic.

If anything changes or if I'll manage to make something work, I will share it here.

Update:

It's graphically much more broken than I thought. Also the sound is not right, even if the cracks would not be there.

It is using a lot of DirectX 10 and 11 for rendering, so it probably won't be fixed in WINE anytime soon.

Problem is, the game is very much about feeling the atmosphere. Therefore, correct implementation of sound and very special graphic effects is crucial for good gameplay. I strongly recommend not to play the game until sure the sound and graphics work properly.

I personally broke my principles and spent another ~126 EUR on windows just to play the game. It was worth it for me, which, of course, does not mean it would be worth for even most of the others who are happy windows-less.

I will no longer try hard to make the game work under GNU/Linux from now on. Feel free to add your advice on how to make it run well.

126 EUR on windows alone? Next time better buy an OEM licence, e.g. from your German neighbour for ~6 EUR (Win 10 Pro).

"Patch" aside, the initial reports don't sound good, but I hope it will be playable on Linux eventually. Pointless to buy it before then.

Windows belongs in walls, not computers.

I know about OEM licences, but you can't put OEM licensed wins into virtual machines (or onto other machines). I wanted that option. Also, I wanted to play the game the same day, in full detail without problems. I got what I went for, and I am content with that.

Anyways, thanks for intended help. Intents matters. :-) Ok, I'll try to test that until the end of the week. Hopefully, I'll have time for that. Given it is source code patch, I'll have to setup wine compilation and then the wineprefix by hand, which I am not familiar with closely (playonlinux does that all for me), so it might take some time.

Nevertheless, even just visual trouble goes far beyond this. And sounds are, for example, mixed differently (voices seemed quieter than on windows - although it might need re-check).
Since the game is very, very much about the experience and impression, I recommend to wait until it is fixed very thoroughly.

Anyways I'm in for trying any new fixes and comparing it to "referential" windows experience. I'll gladly give those 5 cents to Linux gaming. If you see anymore, just post them here and I'll try to look into them and report. :-)

(sorry for bad English) I managed to compile Wine 2.14 Staging with the patch mentioned in this topic applied. I confirm it's working, player character distortion is gone. But there are more bugs still present. Some objects are normals flipped, shadows are flickering occasionally, sound is crackling, also positioning and volume of some audiosamples are incorrect.

As for building Wine, it turned out somewhat complicated. I made it on Linux Mint 18.1, as a main guide I used this two instructions https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Biarch_Wine_On_Ubuntu and https://github.com/wine-compholio/wine-staging#building along with some troubleshooting found on other sites.

I recorded a video of how game works by now on my GTX-660 https://vimeo.com/229951964 (captured with http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/)

P.S.: where can I read about links posting restrictions and is there a way to share a link to a fileshare hosting?

Minor update:

I've just tried fresh version of wine packed for PlayOnLinux, WINE 2.20 (tried with version 1.02 of the game).
(Note: This was not wine with staging patches.)
Run ~40s of the game from start just to check progress.

- Lots of heavy graphic glitches occurring on character seems fixed
- Few other glitches remains (broken headsac, broken moss on the tree-boat)
- Sound is still cracking

It almost seems playable, although I'd still not recommend doing so yet.

I might have some time during Christmas to try to play it through and compare with reference windows experience. I'll report further then.

Using of https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk (Provides a Vulkan-based compatibility layer for DXGI and D3D11, which may be used to run 3D applications on Linux using Wine) makes graphics almost perfect, no more flickering etc.

I was hoping to play this on Linux Mint as well. Will try WINE and see how it goes.

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Hi!

Is it playable now, considering latest wine 5 and dxvk?

Thanks!

Anyone know how it runs now with Proton?

...Does anyone have a Steam Deck yet to try it out on? lol

This game plays beautifully on Linux with Lutris! Running Void Linux on a Intel Nuc i9 Beast Canyon with the Intel Arc A770 card with high graphic settings, fullscreen at 1080, and raytracing enabled. No slow down noticeable after playing for an hour. :-)