Half-Life 2

What works

This report is mostly an update to the earlier report for HL2:LC I had posted for Wine 1.1.37. The tests I had performed this time were not so extensive but it seems that there hadn't been any major regressions introduced in Wine since version 1.1.37 that affect this game.

So I'm glad to repeat myself: almost everything is working good, including downloading/installing from steam, launching, playing, saving, e.t.c.

What does not

Again, problems seems to remain the same as they were with Wine 1.1.37:

• Some minor texture filtering glitches when running the game with MSAA enabled;
• 6xMSAA mode don't work if set to be used from in-game menus;
• Some shaders seem to work incorrectly when MSAA is used and OffscreenRenderingMode is set to "fbo" (Framebuffer Objects);
• Some shaders seem to cause noticeable­ slowdown when OffscreenRenderingMode is set to "backbuffer";
• Enabling "Full HDR" mode causes the game to be painfully slow;
• Enabling "Bloom HDR" mode noticeably slows down a game;
• Some textures seems to look overbright when "Bloom HDR" render mode is used;
• Somewhere between Wine 1.3.4 and 1.3.6 there been a regression introduced (reported as bug #25150) that causes refraction shader to display upside-down picture at some circumstances when OffscreenRenderingMode is set to "backbuffer". For example, when looking up from underwater through the water surfrace the above-water picture would be rendered upside-down. This regression is still not fixed as of Wine 1.3.10 and seems to affect all Source-based games. I would like to ask everybody who have got HL2:LC installed to set orm=backbuffer with winetricks and test if this bug affects their systems too. Post confirmations please to the above mentioned bug report #25150 and vote for that bug so Wine devs would pay attention to this regression. Thanks!­
  

Workarounds

What was not tested

Nothing. All relevant pa­rts of the game installation and execution had been tested.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

The specs of computer that was used for testing: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Black Edition Processor @3200MHz 6GB DDR2 PC-6400 RAM Giga-Byte GeForce GTS250 with 1Gb VRAM Wine 1.3.10 compiled from source. How to enable MSAA in Source-based games: 1. Set \\HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D\Multisampling to "enabled" and change \\HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D\OffscreenRenderingMode to "backbuffer". This may be accomplished either manually using registry editor or with help of winetricks script using command line arguments "multisampling=enabled orm=backbuffer". 2. Chose desired MSAA mode in the drivers control for your GPU. Do not use "Override application settings" option, use "Enhance application settings" instead. 3. Use in-game graphics preferences menu to set MSAA mode to 2x or 4x (and not 6x - it wouldn't work!). Both selections will do and would instruct the game engine to use MSAA-safe render pipeline. Actual MSAA mode used would depend on the settings you had set in GPU driver control panel. 4. Some game shaders would cause huge slowdown when Wine is configured to use ORM=backbuffer. To workaround this problem try to run the game with "-dxlevel 81" added to the launch parameters once. Remove "-dxlevel 81" from launch parameters as soon as you had launched the game once. Leaving it in place would cause the game engine to reset graphics preferences to defaults each time the game is launched making it impossible to set the desired MSAA mode and some of the other visual details settings. As soon as the game switches to the DirectX8.1 render pipeline (you may check this at the advanced graphics preferences game menu - one where MSAA level and other visuals details may be set) set the Shaders details to "Low". It would restrict the game engine from using shaders that cause huge slowdowns with Wine when ORM is set to "backbuffer". 5. There still might be some render errors with water surfaces. You may try to play with mat_clipz console variable setting it to 0 - it would degrade water surfacer rendering realism a bit (reflections would appear from the objects that should not be reflected in real world situation) but may fix water surface render errors I had mentioned earlier. 6. Play a bit with Wine glsl settings. Some may get more FPS after using "winetricks glsl-disable", while other would have better luck with "winetricks glsl-enable". Resulting FPS in regards to the GLSL depends on the GPU you have: the faster and newer your GPU is - the more chances that glsl-enable would be faster for you.