ArcaniA - Gothic 4 (39690)

[ziabice]

On launch this game shows a black fullscreen window with a custom cursor, nothing else happens. You can use ALT-TAB correctly. Is like it is tryng to play some video, falling.

This game used to work with vanilla WINE (and better with gallium nine patches), but I can't recall the DLL I installed.

I'm using Proton 3.7-3.

Here's the log: https://gist.github.com/ziabice/3394ad31eb0c1952e91932308719ed6c

My system specs: https://gist.github.com/ziabice/8c19008e58f82b16a62f7ab65ba235d4

[magos-linux]

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4765T RAM: 16G SSD: KINGSTON SUV300S37A120G
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4G (nvidia-current 396.54)
OS: MagOS Linux 2016.64
DE: Plasma+compiz-fusion 1680x1050
Proton version: 3.7-8

Game runs well with 32bit prefix and
winetricks d3dx9_43 xact physx wmp10
winetricks vd=1680x1050 windowmanagerdecorated=n windowmanagermanaged=n

I have played game from beginning to end.

Issues

• humans has a red eyes (orcs are ok). This can be fixed by disabling "Detailed Faces" in video settings.
• game crashes sometimes, when changing video setting in game. Settings in main menu works well.
• windowed mode doesn't work for me (there is a sound of loading game on black screen). You can switch back to fullscreen by editing file "steamapps/compatdata/39690/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/ArcaniA - Gothic 4/VideoSettings.xml"

You can force using several cores of CPU in file "steamapps/common/Arcania Gothic 4/Data/configuration/ProcessManager.xml" by editing string

- <ThreadConfig platform="PC" cores="1" >
+ <ThreadConfig platform="PC" cores="4" >

[ziabice]

Tested with Proton 4.2-1, same results. Game is not working and shows only a black window.

[jarrard]

Tested with 4.11-10,

Yeah doesn't launch for me, however I dunno if proton can be configured to do a win32 prefix.

So odd that proton doesn't support win32 prefixes, so very odd!

Recommendation, just use lutris

[shoober420]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: ArcaniA
• Steam AppID of the game: https://steamdb.info/app/39690/

System Information

• GPU: GTX 760
• Driver/LLVM version: NVIDIA 440.44
• Kernel version: 5.4.15
• https://github.com/shoober420/linux-scripts/blob/main/home/shoober420/sysinfonvidia
• Proton version: 4.11-12

LOG:
steam-39690.log

Symptoms

Black screen at launch

Similar to ArcaniA: Fall of Setarrif.
#3488

[kisak-valve]

Looks like this game would benefit from support for wmvcore maturing. (fixme:wmvcore:WMSyncReader_Open (0x179ac8)->(L"Z:\\home\\jukilo420_-\\.local\\share\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Arcania Gothic 4\\Data\\video\\sb_logo.wmv"): stub!)

[kisak-valve]

Arcania

Issue transferred from #4942.
@4164696f73 posted on 2021-07-04T12:02:09:

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Arcania
• Steam AppID of the game: 39690

System Information

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 750 Ti
• Driver/LLVM version: Nvidia 465.31
• Kernel version: 5.10.47-1 Linux LTS
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/4164696f73/6479c176600c545446cc0a6218bd5115
• Proton version: [6.3.5], [5.13.6], [5.0.10]

I confirm:

• that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Failed to obtain a log.

Symptoms

The game refuses to launch - infinite loading, game not opening at all.

Reproduction

Launch the game, get a black screen.

Additional info:

Found some information here: https://www.protondb.com/app/39690 but nothing helped. This website is quite good when it comes to user feedback on if a game works or not. Issued a refund, so I'll be unable to test anything more.

[jarrard]

Does not start with Proton 5.13-6, 6.3-5, Experimental, GE 6.8-2

Requires dependencies xact_x64(you could try faudio here), wmp11 (mf likely works also), physx (odd, this should have installed during pfx creation)

Seems to be some issues even after those are installed. Here is a log file without anything but proton 6.3.

steam-39690.log

[jarrard]

Two things stick out. (mesa21.1+ with 6800xt here)
Required Vulkan extension VK_KHR_surface not supported
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'dxvk::DxvkError'

Game may not be compatible with DXVK 1.9?

Interesting enough I installed amdvlk and loaded that with icd and that surface extension is supported. Maybe time to install those dependencies again and see what happens. Keep in mind this game is 32bit!

Another issue is wmp11 and xact do not install correctly in protons above 5.0 from what I can see. It has all sorts of permission issues with the dll's and registering them. You can painfully go through and sort them out and MAYBE get those to install, but it doesn't mean the game will work.

It just seems like this game is a absolute mess to get running! (at least for AMD users, I remember having it running with my 1080ti)

[jarrard]

I found this, apparently there is some issues under windows. Unfortunately doing this didn't resolve the problem under Proton for me, still tries to load up but fails. I have the dependencies loaded up on proton5.0-10 also (some won't install on newer).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1709583781

legacy version works under windows10 if you delete garbage files (from non-legacy), but under Wine or Proton it has Application load error 5:0000065434 (this shows under win10 also with garbage files, so I think its a generic error code, can mean anything)

I presume this is something about a missing resource, but I've tried pretty much everything suggested.
If someone gets this working let us know the steps taken. Just know that I tested the normal NON LEGACY version under win10 and it failed. Only Legacy works (there are hex patches you can do to improve its performance).

Latest Log:
Proton5.0-10: wmp11, xact_x64, physx used (game tested to work under win10, no error messages shown).
steam-39690.log

[4164696f73]

I tried to play this game on newest Proton Experimental (as of today), and the game does work until a certain point. After you start a new game, the game plays nicely (FPS is low, but that doesn't really matter to me as long as it's smooth) until you finish the "introduction to the game" part (dungeon where you play as Rhobar), and after you get onto your main character, after beating the demon in the dungeon, the game still works fine until the first dialog with Ivy ends. Then the game freezes.

I also tried tinkering on Proton Experimental, but the same results apply (installed wmp11, xact_x64, physx). Other (Valve) Protons don't work at all.

Is there something I can do to help discovering what is wrong? I remember there being a command you put to the launch option to generate a log, would that help in this case (if so, I'd also wanna ask to provide that command)?

Also, thank you for all the work with Proton!

[kisak-valve]

Hello @4164696f73, you can use PROTON_LOG=1 %command% in the game's launch options to tell Proton to generate a log in your home folder (~/steam-39690.log).

[4164696f73]

steam-39690.log

System info for some additional spice (in case it's needed): https://gist.github.com/4164696f73/ff39ee1a06948954b97ab4de975ee668

[Blisto91]

Looks like it errors reading some wmv video file. Earlier winegstreamer also have a timeout error.

[aljaz-zupan]

Here is mine if it helps. As I can see the shine_glowing.wmv is missing.

Same issue as @4164696f73
steam-39690.log

[4164696f73]

So, according to ProtonDB, all you gotta do to play the game is to copy two files. So I tried that and it works, read further if you want more info.

The game seems to be very angry about shine_glowing.wmv and shine_turning.wmv missing, so copying any video and putting those there fixes the game. I haven't tried past the first dialogue as of now, but I do plan to go through the whole game some time soon. Talking with Ivy went smoothly, dialog ended nicely and I could save the game (without those files, the game just crashes after talking to Ivy). Seems you can play the game normally, without any crashes.

Fast script (using the shortest *.wmv files - 1.49 seconds):

cd $HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/ArcaniA/Data/Video; cp B_AhnBael.wmv shine_glowing.wmv; cp B_AhnBael.wmv shine_turning.wmv

The one-liner just enters the Arcania/data/video and copies file B_AhnBael.wmv to shine_glowing.wmv and shine_turning.wmv, so if you don't want to run this script for any reason, open your file manager and do just that.

If the game does not run for you for any reason, e.g. the game is not even rendering at all after pressing "start", set the Proton version to 7.0-6, then you can set it back to Proton Experimental and it works (or just try enforcing Proton Experimental) - the game did not want to launch for me before I did that. Might be just because the game installed weirdly or something, and that fixed it for me.

IMPORTANT INFO:
The legacy version of the game (selected in betas) does not work properly. You can launch it and play, however saved games are saved for non-legacy game, meaning the saved game will not work on legacy client. You have to play the non-legacy version.

[4164696f73]

I can now confirm that adding those two files fixes the game for good (message above). Screenshot of the credits for "proof" that it works.