The first time a new player on Linux tries to play Apex Legends it can be a horrible experience. From occasional stuttering when a new shader is cached, to complete freezes and crashes as hundred or thousands of new shaders a processed. These problems also plague long time Apex Legends on Linux players as each new map update has a huge impact on game performance requiring re-rendering of shaders. This repository will hopefully become a large community effort to make Apex Legends on Linux a smooth and enjoyable experience for everyone.
Apex Legends uses the Direct3D 11 rendering engine which is not supported on Linux. Instead, Proton uses DXVK to provide a Vulkan-based implementation of D3D11 and 10. While this works great for most games, some have a lot of shaders that need to be accessed while you play the game. The Valve team handles most of the pre-caching of these shaders from community sourced files, but they do not distribute this one file which assists with accessing these pre-cached shaders. A more detailed explanation of what goes on behind the scenes can be found in this r/linux_gaming thread.
Instead of each player having to drop in multiple times with unplayable rendering lag and stutter, we can combine the efforts of multiple Apex Legends players by combining our dxvk-cache files using the dxvk-cache-tool created by DarkTigrus. Lutris provides a build of this tool here.
This effort was originally started by u/ryao in this r/linux_gaming thread. This thread worked well for a while but will eventually get lost in the history of the subreddit and may not be easy to find, especially for new players. Additionally, the history of the cache file is not readily available and cannot be quickly reverted in the event of a bad merge. This repository will also add more transparency to each merge, make it easier to give credit to each contributed, and can be more easily forked/transferred should I or any future maintainers decide to stop working on this project.
View the r5apex.dxvk-cache file in this repository and click the Download button in the top right hand corner. You can also use this link to directly download the file to your computer. Copy the downloaded file to your Apex Legends shadercache folder located at /path/to/steamapps/shadercache/1172470/DXVK_state_cache/r5apex.dxvk-cache. By default this location is ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache/1172470/DXVK_state_cache/r5apex.dxvk-cache. That's it!
You could also clone this repository to your local machine and either manually or automatically pull each update and copy your local repository files to the same location listed above. This does require installing and setting up git and git-lfs for which there are many guides available online.
As this is a new project, I am open to new ideas on how we can make this process easier and faster for contributors and maintainers. If you would like to propose new ideas or start a discussion around this, please open an issue.
First, create a fork of this repository in your GitHub account and clone your forked repository to your local machine.
Next, copy your local cache file in to your local repository. Assuming you are using the command line and are currently working out of your repository folder it might look something like this.
cp ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache/1172470/DXVK_state_cache/r5apex.dxvk-cache ./r5apex-local.dxvk-cache
Merge the current repositories cache file with your local cache file. Building off the previous command it should like something like this.
dxvk-cache-tool ./r5apex.dxvk-cache ./r5apex-local.dxvk-cache
Now, rename the output cache file to the repository file name so it can be added to the commit.
mv ./output.dxvk-cache ./r5apex.dxvk-cache
Stage the new cache file, commit, and push to your repository.
git add r5apex.dxvk-cache
git commit -m "$(date +%s)"
git push origin main
Finally, create a pull request with this repository. Include the number of new entries this request will add to the cache file!
Begin by downloading the most recent version of the cache file from this repository here, r5apex.dxvk-cache file, or this direct link.
Next, copy your local cache file in to the same folder that contains that cache file you downloaded. Assuming you are using the command line and are currently working out of said folder it might look something like this.
cp ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache/1172470/DXVK_state_cache/r5apex.dxvk-cache ./r5apex-local.dxvk-cache
Merge the downloaded cache file with your local cache file. Building off the previous command it should like something like this.
dxvk-cache-tool ./r5apex.dxvk-cache ./r5apex-local.dxvk-cache
Upload the output.dxvk-cache generated file to your preferred location and make a publicly accessible link for it.
Open up an issue, making sure to use the Cache File Entry issue template. You can also use this link, Cache File Entry. Please fill out the entire template! It makes it that much easier for me.
u/ryao (original maintainer on r/linux_gaming)
u/Melon__Bread
u/najodleglejszy
u/PsychologicalLog1090
u/a9dnsn
u/LilCalosis
u/Flubberding
u/AnyEntertainment8080
u/arvind-d
u/DAVE_nn
u/yourfavrodney
u/jumper775
u/Tiflotin
u/NineBallAYAYA
u/CaptainKrisss
u/Nik0ne
u/Tenshar
u/-ThunderFox - 3604 entries
u/EpicCreeper713
u/Kitchen-Drop236
u/SneakySnk
u/K1f0
u/gudhost
u/wanna_play_r5
u/baryluk
u/sP6awFXL94V6vH7C
cybersandwich - 88 entries
This would not be possible without everyone who originally contributed to this file when Apex Legends first supported Linux and could not continue to be possible without each contribution and user from the community.
Together, we will slátra our enemies.