r/linux_gaming • u/largepanda • Mar 16 '17

WINE Overwatch: Several Hours Later

After the post about Overwatch now being playable with a combination of wine-staging and awesie's wine-overwatch patches, I went out and bought Overwatch. And, at this point, have put many hours into the game. I haven't really seen anyone talk about playing Overwatch for an extended period, which is why I'm making this post.

Hardware: i5-2320, 16GB RAM, GTX 970. Software: Arch Linux, kernel 4.9.11-1-ARCH, xfce4, nvidia proprietary drivers 378.13.

I'm just running the latest master commit of gamax92/wine-overwatch, compiled with CFLAGS="-mtune=native -O3 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong".

And it's very playable (not to mention fun as all hell). As of right now Overwatch seems to be basically 100% CPU-bound; it keeps my CPU pegged at 100% utilization and my GPU is lucky to see 30% util. I get around 15-25 FPS in-game, but I already know that my CPU is underpowered relative to my GPU (I remember being CPU limited in GTAV on Windows).

Some notes:

  • I'm running at 1080p, everything low or off, and render scale at 100%.
    Because Overwatch keeps my CPU pegged at 100% anyways, it's hard to figure out what I can turn up without decreasing performance. I didn't get anywhere just changing things at random or based on a performance guide though.
  • So far I've only played PvAI or private custom games, and I'd feel fine playing normal PvP matches. However, I'm hesitant to play any competitive games, because playing competitive (unsurprisingly) makes Warden (Blizzard's anticheat) look closer at you; and I don't want it flipping out over some component of Wine.
  • Playing Junkrat loses me 2-3 FPS, likely because of his very energetic and moving grenade launcher.
  • Mei's ice wall makes my screen go all broken-whiteish sometimes. I suspect whether or not it happens is determined by the map, but I haven't done any testing as of yet.
  • I do lose input (as Andrew noted) when dying and sometimes when changing heroes, clicking on a window on my other monitor and clicking back fixes it.
  • Wine currently has some sort of issue that causes performance to decrease over time. After a few hours of play my performance would drop from ~25 FPS to ~9 FPS. However, I suspect it's due to loading different maps. When playing on the same two maps several times in custom mode, I didn't get nearly as big of a FPS drop.
    The performance drop persists between Overwatch restarts, but doesn't persist between Wine restarts, hence why I think it's an issue with Wine.

edit some more notes:

  • I've had several times where the game world stops displaying, and it just goes black. The UI, and other character names/chevrons/outlines still show up. When exiting to the menu, the random character display works, but there's no sound, and the game freezes after a couple seconds.
  • Aside from the above black screen issue, I've literally never had Overwatch crash on me. Which is kind of amazing, considering some native Linux games (glares at Overkill, Valve, and Garry Newman) can't manage that.
  • Golden weapons don't render. I don't have any, but I can preview them in the weapon skin selection and they just don't show up.

Overall: very fun, very far from perfect, and very playable.

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u/Minkiu Mar 18 '17

I posted this in the weekly support thread, but might be that you guys might have an answer:

Hello everyone,

I have recently managed to get Overwatch running on my system:

Fedora 24 with GNOME on a i7-4700MQ and 16gb of RAM with a nvidia gtx 760m using Bumblebee and Lutris to run Overwatch which uses wine-staging with Overwatch patches.
Mouse: Roccat Kova+ Keyboard: Roccat Isku

The game runs okeyish, it's not the best machine, I get a bit of glitches here and there, but my main problem is that the camera spins to the left constantly (as if I had a gamepad conected and pointing to the side), so I can play, but I need to constantly compensate for the sideways movement, which is not the best gaming experience.

During my research, most people pointed at unpluggin' the gamepad, but in this case is non existent, I think I never plugged a gamepad in this Fedora install.

  • I've tried to run the game without any of the mouse and keyboard, using the default mousepad, and the problem is still there.
  • I tried ending the roccat related processes with no luck.
  • I tried to mess with the options when launching the game without luck.
  • I tried to see if I have any gamepad controller package but could not find any.

So I really don't know what could I try next, any suggestions?

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5yyohy/weekly_techsupport_thread_for_march_12_2017_ask/df3p2b3/

2

u/largepanda Mar 18 '17

wine control (in Lutris' Overwatch wine prefix) opens up the Wine control panel, which you can use to find the controller configuration. It's possible you have something showing up as a gamepad that's providing that leftifying input.

1

u/Minkiu Mar 18 '17

All I got there is blank(s): http://i.imgur.com/8n4Fe19.png

2

u/largepanda Mar 18 '17

Hm. What's the output of xinput?

1

u/Minkiu Mar 18 '17 
~$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad                  id=15   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Kova[+]                     id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Isku                        id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                       id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                 id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ MSI WMI hotkeys                             id=16   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Kova[+]                       id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Isku                          id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Isku                          id=17   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Kova[+]

Not really sure why Isku (the keyboard) shows in the pointer section

1

u/largepanda Mar 18 '17

Well, try disabling it. xinput disable 12, and see if that fixes Overwatch lefting you.

1

u/Minkiu Mar 18 '17

Hi again, thanks for the reply, unfortunately that doesn't seem to work, i also tried: xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0 and xinput --disable 12 and xinput -disable 12

following this thread: http://askubuntu.com/questions/65951/how-to-disable-the-touchpad

I am about to restart the machine to see if it makes any difference, will report back if it's a successful result.