APB 1.30+ on Linux (now including easy non-Steam method)

[mojical 160]

10 hours ago, Rade said:

And if you really like messing about, create a ram disk for the AssetCache folder before you play the game. The example below links the AssetCache folder to RAM, essentially your AssetCache folder is a RAM drive and files are being written directly to your RAM, it has a size limit of 8GB, and will delete upon a system reboot or if you unmount it.

Storing assets in RAM is a great idea, but now that the game has been upgraded to 64 bits I'd suggest using APB's built in RAM cache feature instead. That way Wine/Proton doesn't need to wrap any filesystem accesses.

This is done via a config file edit, you can go to APBGame/Config/DefaultEngine.ini and change the line

m_bUseDiskCache=True

by replacing "True" with "False". If you launch the game like this (and don't let the launcher overwrite this config), the AssetCache folder will be empty while playing.

[Rade 54]

I gave m_bUseDiskCache=False a little go and the game was stuttering excessively and ran badly, this is under Fedora 37.  I can confirm it was working as the AssetCache was empty throughout playing around on social and FC.

 

Might give it a go in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 22.10 see if works any better.

 

Update 22/03/23

 

Tried m_bUseDiskCache=False in Ubuntu 22.10 and it introduces frequent stutters but not as bad as Fedora 37. Therefore in my experience it's not an option I would use.

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Rade

[BlatMan 711]

On Windows, changing m_bUseDiskCache from True to False did stop APB from using the disk, but it didn't have any affect on stuttering. It still freezes during garbage collection, and it often stutters when an opposing player and I shoot at the same time.

 

Turning off texture streaming seemed to help the most with stuttering, but it causes general protection fault crashes. Maybe it will be different in Linux.

[mojical 160]

On 3/22/2023 at 8:06 PM, BlatMan said:

On Windows, changing m_bUseDiskCache from True to False did stop APB from using the disk, but it didn't have any affect on stuttering. It still freezes during garbage collection, and it often stutters when an opposing player and I shoot at the same time.

 

Turning off texture streaming seemed to help the most with stuttering, but it causes general protection fault crashes. Maybe it will be different in Linux.

Unfortunately GC is still a major cause of stutters even after the 64 bit upgrade. Increasing the GC purge interval (TimeBetweenPurgingPendingKillObjects in Engine/BaseEngine.ini) to 90 seconds or even 75 causes horrible stutters of >100ms no matter how powerful the PC, so the stock 60 second interval is pretty much the sweet spot. The only somewhat viable alternative is to set a ridiculously large interval to bypass GC altogether, which will lead to performance degradation and eventually the game eating up all the RAM. This applies to both Linux and Windows.

 

In my experience and with a high performance SSD (Plextor M10P) the effect of disabling disk cache is barely noticeable after the framerate has settled when all custom characters and cars are loaded. Nevertheless, I have been playing for 3+ weeks with disk cache enabled on Nobara (a Fedora 37 derivative) and didn't notice any negative impact from turning off disk cache.

 

I also use a config with texture streaming disabled and I haven't noticed any crashes since I switched to Wine 8 (currently Wine 8.4 from Wine-tkg). Wine 7 and its derivatives like Proton-GE caused random crashes for me, which were more frequent in fullscreen mode as opposed to borderless.

 

Here is a short video of how Asylum runs on my PC with my custom config, including disk cache disabled, texture streaming disabled and GC fully disabled:

Note that I am using UI scaling because even though it's 1080p borderless, my monitor is rather small. I would also not recommend disabling GC completely, it can lead to the game freezing when exiting or changing districts.

Edited March 23, 2023 by mojical

[Ketog 1031]

On 3/13/2023 at 6:12 PM, Rade said:

This is very interesting. I'm running with an Intel Arc A770 LE and in Windows 11 APB runs very poor, one big stutter mess. Its almost impossible at times to kill anyone and thats with the current latest Arc drivers.

 

I've just installed Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and compiled a 6.2 Linux Kernel (native Intel Arc support), will see how APB runs.

 

EDIT

 

Just played a FC round and it runs much better than I expected and better than Windows!

 

I am using the following for the APB launcher, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Steam/Proton.

 

'/home/USERNAME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton 7.0'/proton waitforexitandrun '/home/USERNAME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/APB Reloaded/Binaries/APB.exe' -nosteam # %command%

 

 

i was looking for the ARC user, how does APB run after all the driver updates that has been happening on intel's side ?

[Rade 54]

Intel really have been pushing the driver updates, the latest one 101.4255 is working really well in Windows with APB, I'd say its better than Linux now.

[Ketog 1031]

Thanks @mojical 

 

 

 

 

Running like a breeze on the deck using Proton GE 7-53 , surprisingly not pushing it too hard, here's the analytics while my friend medek was with me on a deck as well!

Edited March 29, 2023 by Ketog

[mojical 160]

31 minutes ago, Ketog said:

Running like a breeze on the deck using Proton GE 7-53 , surprisingly not pushing it too hard, here's the analytics while my friend medek was with me on a deck as well!

Looks good! I'm a bit surprised the CPU isn't clocking higher. On the other hand, there's no real reason to target over 60 fps with the Deck.

Have you gotten any crashes, issues with the launch command or corrupted mail messages with 7-53?

Edited March 29, 2023 by mojical

[Ketog 1031]

15 hours ago, mojical said:

Looks good! I'm a bit surprised the CPU isn't clocking higher. On the other hand, there's no real reason to target over 60 fps with the Deck.

Have you gotten any crashes, issues with the launch command or corrupted mail messages with 7-53?

 

honestly not really willing to do anything more than just paritcipate to racing events on the deck

i haven't touched mail or the marketplace, and i can't check again sadly, because my deck has a defect and i just RMA'd it today

[magik 184]

9 hours ago, Ketog said:

 

honestly not really willing to do anything more than just paritcipate to racing events on the deck

i haven't touched mail or the marketplace, and i can't check again sadly, because my deck has a defect and i just RMA'd it today

Shoot that sucks man, hope you get it back soon.

 

On my deck, I mail that says:

'An error occurred while trying to load this message's

But I did get my cash from marketplace, and current event Rewards.

 

I've also recently set my Deck to use 4gb of RAM for the GPU rather than the default settings of 1gb. I'm stable at 40fps on the deck undocked.

 

As for now, only usable game controls are from another steam user and they're not great so I'm working on creating my own and hopefully update to the steam community. Figure I can link or update with where to get it via steam when it's done.

 

Edit: I'm also on an older version of Proton, I'll try with 7-53 tonight and update further.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Sergsininia

[Gateron 267]

On 3/13/2023 at 6:12 PM, Rade said:

This is very interesting. I'm running with an Intel Arc A770 LE and in Windows 11 APB runs very poor, one big stutter mess. Its almost impossible at times to kill anyone and thats with the current latest Arc drivers.

 

I've just installed Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and compiled a 6.2 Linux Kernel (native Intel Arc support), will see how APB runs.

 

EDIT

 

Just played a FC round and it runs much better than I expected and better than Windows!

 

I am using the following for the APB launcher, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Steam/Proton.

 

'/home/USERNAME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton 7.0'/proton waitforexitandrun '/home/USERNAME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/APB Reloaded/Binaries/APB.exe' -nosteam # %command%

 

 

Well your card doesn't support most old games. They rather emulate it then actually run it on the hardware. So you get pretty bad performance in older direct x titles. Kinda the downside of being an early adopter.

[Rade 54]

@Gateron I knew exactly what I was buying at the time, a piece of history.

 

 

[Ketog 1031]

On 3/31/2023 at 3:01 PM, Rade said:

@Gateron I knew exactly what I was buying at the time, a piece of history.

 

 

I relate to that statement, there's so many cards i wish i could buy just for that reason, Radeon VII / Titan series cards, R9 Fury X, Palit KalmX series and a few more

Edited April 2, 2023 by Ketog

[Probber 0]

On 3/30/2023 at 10:35 PM, Sergsininia said:

Shoot that sucks man, hope you get it back soon.

 

On my deck, I mail that says:

'An error occurred while trying to load this message's

But I did get my cash from marketplace, and current event Rewards.

 

I've also recently set my Deck to use 4gb of RAM for the GPU rather than the default settings of 1gb. I'm stable at 40fps on the deck undocked.

 

As for now, only usable game controls are from another steam user and they're not great so I'm working on creating my own and hopefully update to the steam community. Figure I can link or update with where to get it via steam when it's done.

 

Edit: I'm also on an older version of Proton, I'll try with 7-53 tonight and update further.

i have the same problem regarding the corrupt mail messages. Also almost all of my attachments are empty.

I am playing on Proton-GE-7-53-1 on my Arch Desktop

[mojical 160]

On 4/3/2023 at 5:31 PM, Probber said:

i have the same problem regarding the corrupt mail messages. Also almost all of my attachments are empty.

I am playing on Proton-GE-7-53-1 on my Arch Desktop

I have updated the guide to use official Proton 8.0 which was released yesterday. This fixes the mail glitch without needing to download an external tool.

[your-username-is-not-suitable 82]

Can confirm this guide will work for an Arch minimal install using LXQT + Openbox desktop environment on the Linux kernel (Not hardened lts or zen. Haven't tried those)

 

A couple of things to note is before installing the drivers as per the section in the ProtonGE tutorial, install the linux-headers package first

 

If you're on an nvidia card and you've followed the OPs directions etc and the game launches and the splash screen appears, then closes after a few seconds, try uninstalling the amdvlk package. For some reason it shows up after going through this tutorial at least it did for me.

 

Everything else should be identical to the tutorial posted here at least at the time of making this post.

[mojical 160]

On 4/19/2023 at 7:25 PM, your-username-is-not-suitable said:

Can confirm this guide will work for an Arch minimal install using LXQT + Openbox desktop environment on the Linux kernel (Not hardened lts or zen. Haven't tried those)

 

A couple of things to note is before installing the drivers as per the section in the ProtonGE tutorial, install the linux-headers package first

 

If you're on an nvidia card and you've followed the OPs directions etc and the game launches and the splash screen appears, then closes after a few seconds, try uninstalling the amdvlk package. For some reason it shows up after going through this tutorial at least it did for me.

 

Everything else should be identical to the tutorial posted here at least at the time of making this post.

Good point, I decided against writing anything about recommending proprietary drivers for Nvidia users since I assumed it was an obvious step to take. However, for people who are trying Linux out for the first time now that this game is playable this is valuable information. The only caveat is that GPU driver installation varies from distro to distro, so it would not make sense to be too specific about instructions.

The new Proton Experimental update available from within Steam is now based on 8.0 and has even fixed the launcher, unlike official 8.0. Unfortunately, it's too early to update the guide and get rid of the launch commands, as the official launcher will run the game with Steam integration and that still crashes to desktop on the login screen. In any case, it's a step in the right direction.

[NOiR 0]

After the latest update (with new EAC) it doesn't work for me anymore. The launcher starts and game was successfully updated but then, during loading process, everything halts.

Tested with both Proton versions (8.0 and Experimental, with and without additional startup command string).

 

Update:

 

I was managed to successfully startup, login, check in-game mail and even run around in a social district but was instantly kicked out (in a minute or two) with explanation: You were kicked by EasyAntiCheat for the following reason: "Authentication timed out (1/2)".

It was done on steamless wine-8.6.1.r3.g4eb322dc (TkG, Staging, Esync, Fsync). In theory, properly compiled Wine (with EAC patches) should be enough. No Steam integration needed.

Edited April 27, 2023 by NOiR
fixing typo + update

[mojical 160]

3 hours ago, NOiR said:

After the latest update (with new EAC) it doesn't work for me anymore. The launcher starts and game was successfully updated but then, during loading process, everything halts.

Tested with both Proton versions (8.0 and Experimantal, with and without additional startup command string).

Long story short only GE's versions can be used, since the game needs GE's recent EAC patches to work. Install Proton GE 7-55, and while you'll have a broken mailbox and occasional crashes, it's the only way the game will start and actually stay in a district. I'll upgrade the guide as soon as I'm done experimenting with this.

Edited April 27, 2023 by mojical

[Ketog 1031]

Thanks as always for keeping this guide updated, you rock moji

[Zephar 0]

It works the only thing threw me off was I had old work around for Star Citizen still in my host file LOL. So once that was removed it all works. THE GE 7.55 One thing threw me off I did not get that have let it launch crash then let it launch again and then it all works. Anyways this is great its only game ive missed playing when I had windoze way back when.

[Spillra 135]

Tried it out earlier today.
Got a solid 128 capped, never dropped under 125.
With a config i got 200 tops, some what disappointing since i get around 300-400 on windows.

Gonna play around some more

Edited April 30, 2023 by Spillra
typo

[mojical 160]

30 minutes ago, Spillra said:

Tried it out earlier today.
Got a solid 128 uncapped, never dropped under 125.
With a config i got 200 tops, some what disappointing since i get around 300-400 on windows.

Gonna play around some more

 

Which proton version and GPU brand are you using? Did you encounter any crashes?

[Spillra 135]

2 hours ago, mojical said:

 

Which proton version and GPU brand are you using? Did you encounter any crashes?

Nvidia (2070 super), Proton GE 7-55. I crash at least once every time i launch the game but it runs fine after that.

I ran it again without most of the config and then i get a solid 300 in a low pop asylum, so there is something in my config that fucks with the FPS
 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Spillra

[gogeo 38]

Quote

Unknown exception!
 
Script call stack:
    Function APBUserInterface.cLoginIntegrationUIController|WidgetInitialized
    Function APBUserInterface.cLoginIntegrationDialogUIController|WidgetInitialized
History:  
00:06:52 - Log: Log file closed, 01/05/23 02:06:52

When it gets to the login screen I get this crash everytime.

Steam with Proton GE 55, tried 49 as well, same crash.

 

Specs:

OS: (Nobara) Fedora 37

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

GPU: RTX 3060 Ti

RAM: 32GB DDR4

DRIVE: Crucial P1 NVMe 1TB