How to get dgVoodoo 2 working on Linux

[MegaMiku 21]

This guide is for Linux users who are trying to get dgVoodoo 2 work on WINE and Proton through Steam. The instructions are intended for Steam users running SimCity 4.

Before starting, make sure to download (and install if needed) the following:

1. Working installation of WINE, Winetricks, and Protontricks you can get these through your package manager of choice.
2. A copy of dgVoodoo 2_79_3, this is because newer versions of dgVoodoo 2 do not work on WINE as reported in this thread, you can get this version from here.

You now should have everything you'll need for the rest of the guide. 

Open and extract your dgVoodoo2_79_3 file, in here you'll want to open up these two folders.

• From MS Look for the x86 folder and copy all four dlls into your SimCity 4 apps folder.
• Then for the Cpl folder look for the x64 folder and copy and paste dgVoodooCpl.exe to SimCity 4's apps folder. 
• Then lastly copy the dgVoodoo.conf file into the apps folder as well.

Now launch Protontricks, and look for SimCity 4 Deluxe: 24780 and select it.
Select the default wineprefix then run winecfg. Once in winecfg, select the libraries tab.

Then add the following overrides: 

D3D8.dll, D3D9.dll, DDraw.dll

Then click apply and OK. That's it for configuration within wine. Now all that is left to do is set your dgVoodoo 2 settings as usual, if you need more information on how to setup dgVoodoo 2, just refer to this thread.

Following all those steps you should now have dgVoodoo 2 working in SimCity 4 on your Linux distro of your choosing.

Happy modding and building! 

  Edited February 22 by MegaMiku  
Updated link for the dgVoodoo 2 files

[Jamesthe1st 25]

Thank you for this! I will have to try this on my own soon. Do you know if this should help with running the hardware rendering setting? On my Cachyos set up the game doesn't run very well on hardware renderer so I run it on software.

[MegaMiku 21]

Should help yes, I was able to run SC4 on my dedicated GPU instead of my integrated GPU with dgVoodoo 2 with notable performance improvements and less stutter at the more zoomed out levels. You might need to use the GraphicOptions.dll to make sure SC4 uses the DirectX renderer.

[ToadrageThe6th 4]

Hello, may I suggest replacing the link to the official github release of 2.79.3 to a link that provides the compiled zip (such as this) as the link to the official github project doesn't provide compiled code.

[MegaMiku 21]

On it, looks like the original github page no longer offers the compiled releases for some reason, so I'll update the post with this new link, thanks for the heads up!

[Jaggwagg 10]

Two things I would recommend:

1. Through testing and researching, it seems that the latest compatible wine version is actually v2.81.3. Here is a link, although it is not on GitHub (download is in a comment). Although the differences in performance seem to be negligible.
   https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/3600-dgvoodoo2-v2793-v2813-wineproton-compatible/
2. Instead of using winetricks, you can add this to Steam's launch arguments instead: 

   Quote

   WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw=n,b" %command%

    

[MegaMiku 21]

Awesome, Ive been trying to find that version since I did find some reports that 81.X versions were working but I couldn't find any links to get a copy. As for the steam command, I tried that on my desktop and laptop and that didn't work so I resorted to winetricks. So I can't vouch for the functionality of that but I can add in a new section to include this.

[Jaggwagg 10]

36 minutes ago, MegaMiku said:

Awesome, Ive been trying to find that version since I did find some reports that 81.X versions were working but I couldn't find any links to get a copy. As for the steam command, I tried that on my desktop and laptop and that didn't work so I resorted to winetricks. So I can't vouch for the functionality of that but I can add in a new section to include this.

Cue the "it works on my machine" meme.
Might be due to you using the Flatpak version of Steam.  Even though I believe Flatpak should work too. Otherwise I have no idea.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

I can assemble a specific package for Linux users so we can get an easy installation by pointing to the right settings.

[MegaMiku 21]

That would be much appreciated if you can assemble that package! 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

Here is the package for Linux users.  Let me know if I need to change anything.

 

[MegaMiku 21]

Awesome work, the only things I have to say is that the GPU fixes you wrote down only are applicable to windows, getting a dedicated GPU to run a specific program over the integrated graphics is much more variable than windows on linux, I had to deal with this myself. I didn't include this in the guide because I felt like it was out of the scope but I believe now it would be a good time to try and explain it some more.

Drivers on Linux should be installed from your distro's package manager as those are confirmed to work on your distribution and have been vetted. As for actually running games on a dGPU there is a technology called PRIME which basically allows for offloading rendering to another GPU. Prime should work on all GPUs (AMD, NVIDIA, Intel). Once it is installed, the most simple and straighforward way to run it is to put in 

prime-run

For SC4 this can go in the steam launch commands but for the dgVoodoo 2 control panel, you'll want to open up a terminal in the location where the exe is located, and run something along the lines of

prime-run wine dgVoodooCpl.exe 

to get the discrete GPU to show up as an adapter.

But I figure the GPU fixes should be updated for this, at least this time around, there is only really one way to do it for all three, there are other rendering methods available but none of them work for all three. 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

36 minutes ago, MegaMiku said:

Awesome work, the only things I have to say is that the GPU fixes you wrote down only are applicable to windows, getting a dedicated GPU to run a specific program over the integrated graphics is much more variable than windows on linux, I had to deal with this myself. I didn't include this in the guide because I felt like it was out of the scope but I believe now it would be a good time to try and explain it some more.

Drivers on Linux should be installed from your distro's package manager as those are confirmed to work on your distribution and have been vetted. As for actually running games on a dGPU there is a technology called PRIME which basically allows for offloading rendering to another GPU. Prime should work on all GPUs (AMD, NVIDIA, Intel). Once it is installed, the most simple and straighforward way to run it is to put in 

prime-run

For SC4 this can go in the steam launch commands but for the dgVoodoo 2 control panel, you'll want to open up a terminal in the location where the exe is located, and run something along the lines of

prime-run wine dgVoodooCpl.exe 

to get the discrete GPU to show up as an adapter.

But I figure the GPU fixes should be updated for this, at least this time around, there is only really one way to do it for all three, there are other rendering methods available but none of them work for all three. 

I just updated the description and instructions. Let me know if there's anything else to do.

[Lab Rat 13]

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